


The Emma Swan Curse

by terra_vae



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, to be continued ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-16 21:18:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 52,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4640559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terra_vae/pseuds/terra_vae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s finally peace in Storybrooke until a mysterious smoke monster attacks Mister Gold at Granny’s. Ruby disappears. The town panics. Emma and Regina have to join forces to try to figure out what the hell is going on this time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Here We Go Again

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> There will be lots of headcanons in this since I’ve mapped out the plot and written parts of it even before 3B aired. I abandoned it, now though I had some time, found it on my hard drive and more or less finished the story. It’s pretty plot heavy, sprinkled with flashbacks to explain the liberties I had taken. It’s unbetad but I am certain that it would have been never posted if I waited for that.
> 
> This is going to be a twisty ride and I don’t want to spoil anything but in fairness I am going to say that the most interaction will be between Emma and Regina.
> 
> It also ends on a cliffhanger.
> 
> Rated E for a reason.
> 
>  
> 
> DISCLAIMER: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for– profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual. AKA I DO NOT OWN ANYTHING I AM SIMPLY BORROWING THESE CHARACTERS FOR A FEW TWISTS AND TURNS WITH THE SINGLE PURPOSE OF FUN IN MIND

There are times when you would kill for a slow day. Then there are times when you want to kill slow days, repeatedly. Never ending seconds when you wish to be able to just get your hands around them, like they were nothing more than a piece of paper that you could just crumple and throw into the nearest trashcan and then proceed to set it all on fire; after adding some quality accelerant for good measure, of course.

Emma Swan was having one of those days.

It’s been only forty-four minutes since the beginning of her shift at the Sheriff’s Station but she was already bored out of her mind. She switched between looking at the door, watching the clock on the wall and eyeing the phone every few seconds while drumming a beat with a pencil on her thigh but neither time sped up, nor did a visitor come or the ringing of the phone made her jump with disrupting the silence surrounding her.

Today even doing morning patrol was her deputy’s turn which left her all alone, slowly but surely on the way to go crazy or at least pull some of her hair out. She felt like she was going to explode she was so energized after her morning run but she had nothing to do with said energy.

No, nothing wasn’t in any way exaggeration because, yes, Emma Swan, perpetual paperwork avoider actually managed to bring every aspect of the administration at the station up to date weeks ago. At the moment, there was nothing new to be filed or typed in, not since she finished that short report and filled out that one form back last Monday, a week and a half ago.

And even that was about a single incident that should have been handled by animal control and not the Sheriff’s Department to begin with.

Still, she would give pretty much anything for a phone call in which a worried citizen – who doesn’t know any better just like Mrs. McKenzie didn’t – reports a rabid looking fox to her right about now, even if in the end it turns out to be just one more dog that had a highly unlikely accident with red paint.

She was in serious need for some sort of distraction but she was out of work related options.

Hell, in the last few weeks she went and reorganized old files from Graham’s time. She even read some of them, not that there were many or they weren’t incredible repetitive and predictable with her restricted knowledge about the twenty-eight years that went by while time stood still in Storybrooke.

Emma could never wrap her head around how the Dark Curse worked and whenever she really thought about it, it just gave her a headache.

This was already very near torture without physical pain being involved.

She had to get busy with something but she didn’t want to risk getting caught watching a movie or reading a book during work hours by the wrong person. Not after what happened the last time she occupied herself with something ‘extracurricular’ and it became public knowledge.

Slow days or not, if there was one thing she didn’t want to become busy with, it was politics.

Based on how the world worked someone would definitely show up out of the blue to catch her.

She looked at her cell phone on the table.

Playing with it would have been something easier to cover up – transparent all the same but easier – but she didn’t feel like doing that either since the games she had installed were ones she had there for some time now and they simply weren’t holding her interest anymore.

She was still adamant about not looking for new ones after the debacle with the-game-that-should-not-be-named.

That idiot app had gotten her so frustrated that she has thrown her cell at the wall so hard it shattered into multiple pieces and then, to make it worse, the momentum of the flying plastic parts actually made coat rack fell on it as well, thoroughly destroying the device.

After it happened she just blinked a couple of times, dismayed then decided that this was just her luck.

She tried to put the pieces of the ‘Lego’ back together but after about a minute she realized that it was a wasted effort and after an other minute and a half later she came to the realization that the reason she couldn’t find the small piece of plastic that held the most valuable data of the phone was because the SIM card was located in multiple places too.

She always had a strong arm but this seemed a little bit extreme. It felt like a billboard sized sign that she should really find a different way to pass time and unwind than work out and work out and then work out some more.

She, under no circumstances, wanted anyone but especially her parents to figure out what happened. They worried about her enough. It wouldn’t have been helpful if they suddenly started to wonder whether she needed to participate in some heavy duty anger management class along with the town folks.

Solving the issue caused by her outburst would have been easy if she had been still living in New York. She would have just gotten a new phone from the nearest store and then used a trick she had picked up while she was working as a bail bonds woman to get her number back so that she wouldn’t need to explain the change.

Getting her contact list back would have been easy pie after that. It would have required some creativity but she was sure she could ‘borrow’ a couple of cells from her family and friends without detection.

In Storybrooke, unfortunately, there wasn’t one establishment where one could just go in and buy a new cell phone. That meant ordering one which came with at least a week waiting, in the best case scenario.

Naturally, she just thought these through after she finished getting rid of the numerous components in an environment friendly way – Henry was going through a phase and some of his passionate speeches still echoed in her tissue of her brain – when her mother called her on the landline inquiring why she wasn’t available the usual way.

She stammered a ridiculous explanation about letting her cell fall into water, thinking that was a generic enough answer not to prompt more inquiry but, of course, Mary Margaret had to ask how she accomplished that and instead of saying she was cleaning or anything even remotely less embarrassing she blurted out that she had let it fall into the toilet.

Sometimes she still congratulated to herself on that one, especially because her idiotic explanation got overheard and she got teased her about it for weeks.

Well, reminiscing wasn’t really helping making time fly as remembering this took three and a half minutes overall.

The truth was that she didn’t feel like doing anything on this dull Wednesday.

It wasn’t a coincidence that she had the pencil in her hand and she knew it. She looked at the spiral notebook she had on her table for nothing more really than to take notes.

Reaching for it seemed like where this was going even though she knew that drawing let her brain wander which wasn’t exactly an attractive option for her these days.

She sighed, shook her head then reached for the item she had been eyeing for the last minute.

She opened it to the last page then flipped backwards towards one that didn’t already have drawings. It took a couple of seconds to find where she left off but when she did she immediately started to doodle, leaving her mind drift to its currently most popular topic which was scenarios where everything that could, would go wrong. 

It wasn’t a short list.  

After all many freaky things have happened in Storybrooke, Maine in the last four and a half years since she first drove into the town to bring back a son that she had given up on and thought she would never even see again, let alone get to know.

There were many enemies to choose from who could return at any given moment to seek revenge and then there were all the fairy tale villains that she knew existed and could show up here at any given second out of the blue with whatever reason.

A part of her wished one of them did.

It wasn’t because of one slow day. She could handle one slow day or a week, hell even a month but it had been a quarter of year now where barely anything happened in Storybrooke requiring anything that resembled real police work and nothing that required for her to be the Savior.

She was very well aware that she should be just enjoying the break from life and death situations until it lasted and she did, for a day, a week and even a month; now however this ‘season of peace’ was making her feel more and more uneasy by the minute because she knew there was no way on this earth that it could last.

The anticipation was slowly driving her nuts.

Last week she pushed Belle into a wall on the street because she believed that she was Zelena.

It was dark and Emma only saw the red hair of the woman who seemed to have trouble with getting into the library and her body acted before her brain did the thinking. Belle’s lithe body collided with the brick with a thud and Emma didn’t let her go even after seeing her face beneath the black hat.

Not until the Librarian proved her identity.

The young woman did pass her test with flying colors and she was very understanding when Emma let her go. She even smiled at her – while touching the side of her neck that had contact with the wall – and told her that Storybrooke was lucky they had such a vigilant Sheriff.

Emma didn’t share her feelings.

During work hours she really didn’t have much else to do than to sit around and just think and think and she was at the point where she analyzed any not even fully formed thought that normally one would bury as fast as they can as deep as they can.

She knew she was tempting fate with letting her imagination run amok but she just wanted the band aid to come off fast instead of anticipating it for God only knows how long yet.

Nostalgic feelings lurked in the back of her mind for the chaos that followed the destruction of the library and the surrounding buildings when Zelena got banished back to Oz.

She hated it but it didn’t change the fact that it was there.

Those were deliciously busy three months compared to the last ninety-some days since the town voted for doing everything with the methods of this world instead of just fixing all the damage with the help of magic.

It was her mother’s suggestion and people just went with it.

Emma was a bit surprised but after a few days she was the first to admit that the hard work made dealing with what happened much easier. The town needed traditional healing and the people living there were in dire need of some bonding as well.

It worked very well and in a few weeks the community turned into a well oiled machine.

Sadly, the reason behind learning to get along wasn’t just because of the shared work but because of the shared loss.

The funerals marking the start of the rebuilding period made it really undesirable and it told a lot about Emma’s current mindset that she actually wanted to go back there just so that she wouldn’t have to be in the here and now.

This morning she woke up soon again, at the same time she did every day now; an hour and a half before her alarm went off again. She just watched the ceiling until it was time to get up and start her morning routine.

She hated that she couldn’t even sleep.

The day before she got so restless she actually had to go out for a run for the second time that day. It took her so many miles a professional athlete would nod appreciatively at the performance to get anywhere near tired.

She went home, took a quick shower and donned her usual sleepwear, panties and a tank top.

She tried meditation even though she felt ridiculous sitting cross legged in the middle of the room. She did it anyway. She cleared her mind just like she was taught but her brain just still didn’t seem to be able to turn off.

Instead her thigh and arm muscles kept twitching. It was almost scary how much pent up energy she still had. Her whole body was buzzing.

She started to walk around because at least that helped and started to stretch some. It calmed her a bit.

The minutes just ticked by while all she wanted were a few hours of blissful unconsciousness where she didn’t have to worry about anything or be bored or fight imaginary battles with known or, well, ‘known’ villains.

She tried e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g she could think of from counting freaking sheep to drinking warm milk until somewhere around a half an hour before 3 AM she resorted to the act she knew from the beginning would help to calm her body but didn’t want to resort to; touching herself.

The endorphins in her blood from the workout made it easy, and a generous amount of teasing with doing the things that made her body hum helped her drift off into a thankfully dreamless sleep almost immediately after reaching release.

How she hated that she couldn’t be complacent with what she had.

When it was funerals and death she wished for peace when it was peace for too long she wanted to go back to chaos. In the I-am-so-busy-I-don’t-even-have-time-to-die days it was unimaginable that it could ever get like this for her and yet it did.

And there goes a big thank you to the stupid human nature and whoever decided on the generally true aspects of it.

Her drawing was becoming a more clear shape and as soon as she realized what it would be once it was finished and another unwanted thought rushed to the forefront of her mind.

She still couldn’t control that part of her nearly well enough and she had little doubt that a few more days like this and she herself would cause some sort of trouble in the town to have something to be busy with.

She had no intention of messing with the lives of others or her own but, unfortunately, that was constantly in the deck of cards she got handled by life.

She didn’t cause incidents, lately, but that wasn’t because she actually got better, quite the opposite in fact. 

Her magic worked instinctually and once she had managed to destroy every single brick from the wall her rooted-in-Planet-Earth-reality mind built up around her abilities she couldn’t find the key to gain control over them. Her own subconscious seemed to take over the reins from the conscious part of her brain at ridiculously random moments and acted out as if it was time to make up for the circa thirty years it had to be dormant.

That constituted of doing things on its own if she got upset enough, or even if too calm, the last one meaning that from time to time it turned errant thoughts into reality.

She made her loved ones and her own life difficult a couple of times but not one soul has been safe from her out the entire population of Storybrooke.

Not until now, and all she needed to do to get there was to cross the proverbial line by a mile with accidentally setting Nate Brandon on fire when he acted like an aggravating asshole. Even though it was more scary than serious and the injured man got healed completely thanks to Gold, after her outburst in her despair Emma got to the conclusion that her power had to be bound before her magic did something irreversible.

It took days of arguments with everyone who cared about her and talking through the risks but in the end she got what she wanted, though it came with the knowledge that considering who she was, even this drastic move would not mean a one hundred percent guarantee that her magic could get free at any given moment.

But it did work.

And it felt incredibly good to be normal again and not have to worry about being the person who among other things like blackouts, throwing around people and doing some serious building demolition had turned every single person in the town into an animal for half a day. Thank God that her mother’s ability to speak with birds manifested in her because of the pressure of the situation otherwise it would have taken far longer to solve the magical mishap.

It still made her cringe when she thought about the sound of the crow as it run down the center of her spine but what happened on her last birthday wasn’t better either.

Her parents had decided it would be nice to surprise her with a party where they invited the entire family. It was supposed to be fun; a just ‘eat, talk and hopefully laugh event’ and it had started out so well.

Then a couple of drinks and one badly worded sentence later it turned into a disaster.

The scenario started to eerily resemble the fight they had on board the Jolly Roger when they were heading towards Neverland to save Henry right before it turned into physical confrontation, only now there were more family members involved.

Before the quickly escalating yelling match between men and women could have morphed into actual slaps and hits, or something even worse, it turned into a high pitched screaming contest when every single person present found themselves in different bodies than the ones they have arrived in courtesy of the Savior’s magic.

The magic experts of the group agreed that it most definitely had to be Emma’s unique, white magic that reversed the soul transfers. The Sheriff was absolutely positive that the two of them only came to consensus on that particular theory because they were both among her body swap victims, leaving them with no other source of help that either Regina or Gold trusted enough to help them out – certainly not someone both of them would have been comfortable with.

Help from the occupants of their meat suits was out of the question as they feared the two ordinary people would only make things worse and they really, really did not need that.

Emma spent a couple of hours with Doctor Hopper to get to the bottom of what specific emotions triggered her reaction so that she could try to explain to Henry – the boy already traumatized for life for just having to exist in his adult birth mother’s body – what to do to get his teenage boy self back and help their family return to its original state.

Henry tried, and did magic, and kind of even enjoyed it, only he didn’t manage to pull off the desired effect of switching everyone back.

Needless to say that particular Friday and Saturday were quite long for all of them but especially busy for Archie since he had sessions with everyone to help them cope.

Her father and, in a way, Regina had the most trouble.

David was having a hard time resisting the impulses, urges and the sheer power that came in package with being the Dark One while Regina was beyond furious getting stuck in ‘Mary Margaret’s useless body’ as she referred to her new vessel as often and as many times as she saw fit.

In contrast Gold even joked about being Prince Charming and helped David resisting the pull to the dark side he experienced.

Apart from having to take Regina’s nearly constant verbal abuse coming from her own body with her own voice Mary Margaret was okay too. At hour nineteen though, after one too many arguments with Regina and seeing her husband’s struggle the teacher decided to ignore all she heard before about their situation and tried a different way to fix the conundrum they were facing.

Emma was sure she will never forget the expressions on the faces of her parents with Gold and Regina’s consciousness at the wheels watching as their rightful bodies made out, with Snow and David’s souls in them.

She rather concentrated on that, than on the kiss itself, because seeing the Pawnshop Owner and the Mayor locking lips rather passionately was definitely not something she wanted to have memories about.

Predictably, just as the Queen and the Dark One had told them before; true love’s kiss didn’t work since their situation was a result of a wish spell and not a curse.

Regina left the room, upset, and Emma felt the need to follow her, only to find her laughing like a certified lunatic and the Sheriff couldn’t help but join in when the Mayor explained that she waited for a very long time to see ‘the greatest true love’ failing at saving the day.

Then the two of them in Mary Margaret and Henry’s bodies agreed that this truly lighthearted moment between them only happened because the body switch was starting to get to them but they both knew that wasn’t the case.

Not for a long time now.

They were friends, good friends. Emma sometimes entertained the idea to think of the other woman as her best friend. She didn’t have many so it didn’t take too much to gain the title, but it was still something, especially given their history.

In the end fixing the mess that Emma’s magic caused turned out to be much simpler than either of them had anticipated.

It started with her and Henry.

They admitted some painful truths to each other, things that they would’ve never said out loud, and then she touched his hand to squeeze it and they simply switched back.

After it worked with them the others tried too but failed until Henry pointed out how they originally thought Emma’s magic was needed to reverse their predicament. So there was nothing else to do then to include the Sheriff in their conversations.

It was painful to watch and all kinds of awkward to hear but she being there, holding elbows or shoulders during the talks worked and everyone returned to their natural state leaving Emma with knowledge she wished she never acquired.

And on top of it all this experience, solving this wish spell, was what opened a whole different can of worms but that was definitely not something she wanted to think about now.

She sighed and shooed away the memories of magical mishaps that started other magical mishaps.

For so long Storybrooke couldn’t get a break from those and curses, evil relatives and too much death, and subsequently neither could she but now…

Okay, that wasn’t entirely true since, what now seemed like a lifetime ago, they both got a whole year off duty. That is, if one can consider being cursed with having false memories and living a pretty good lie, or not even existing anymore in the town’s case as some form of extended vacation.

It was so weird remembering those three hundred and eighty-six days and it has only gotten worse since.

It all started to unravel with something that had not much to do with it.

Regina called her and asked her to go to the docks because she found something about her sister. She went without a second thought and in less than three sentences realized that something was not right. When green smoke enveloped the Mayor and Zelena stood in her place, laughing, it was too late.

The red head pulled a gun on her and Emma remembered being confused about it so much that her whole world narrowed down to that one object and the voice of her attacker who told her that she cursed the bullets so that there was no way she could survive this after ranting about how classy it was from her to actually use a weapon from this world, her world to end her life.

Neither of them heard the boy dropping the plastic containers he had in his hands, or saw how he got between them but he did, with implacable timing.

Emma screamed when she saw the red quickly tainting Henry's shirt. She threw her hands out and the blast threw the Witch off the pier.

The next time the Savior was aware of her surroundings she found herself standing in the middle of the hospital with Henry in her arms and his blood on her shirt.

She didn’t know how they got there. It just happened.

She yelled for Whale and in her shocked state she felt the need to cite her son’s entire medical history to him. The doctor let her blow off some steam that way, and then, after making a comment about how impressing her word count per minute rate was – which from him in some inexplicable way sounded as a lewd comment –, he assured her that he knew Henry’s medical history very well after all he grew up there under his care.

The doctor left after promising he would do everything in his power but Emma didn’t know that would be enough.

She frantically looked for her phone and while she was trying to make a call a small part of her acknowledged that her brain was suddenly trying to put together the pieces of a puzzle she didn’t even know existed before. It felt really bizarre but she let it because it was better than trying to see into the future and be chocked by what ifs.

That’s when Regina nearly teleported into her, shaking her out of her reverie and knocking the cell out of her hand.

Later, Emma actually got to tease the woman about failing at her own lesson about ‘self-displacement’, much later, when it wasn’t a question if their son would live or die.

Then and there she expected to be screamed at for failing at recognizing that she was being played. She wanted, no, needed Regina to yell at her for falling victim to Zelena’s deceit and not seeing through the magical façade immediately.

It didn’t happen.

Instead the Mayor ordered her to stop wallowing and follow her. The two of them walked into the operating room.

Emma felt her stomach drop below the floor when she saw her son opened up on that table. Whale was trying to stop the bleeding but modern medicine didn’t work against Zelena’s spell. Regina took Emma’s hand, squeezed it and then explained to her what to do. It took time, so much time, but it worked. Their unique, shared magic once more did something impossible.

Henry opened his eyes, and Emma was openly sobbing while Regina was smiling as a teardrop run down her face.

Their son said, “Mom….sssssss,” and Emma couldn’t help the strangled laugh that left her mouth.

Whale – after he managed to close his mouth that hung open without his permission after witnessing Henry’s flesh closing back together – told them that the boy very likely would completely recover now but they are still going to do all the required tests to make sure.

The two mothers walked out and Emma more than before expected to be reprimanded by Regina now. She wanted it, her gut needed it but instead she got a story about how Henry broke his left arm when he was five and how it was Regina’s fault. Or at least, back then, she believed it to be.

One moment she was listening to a relevant story about past summers in parks and the next minute the particles of the thought that was nagging at the back of her mind previously simply flew into their places in Emma’s head in the way they finally made sense.

Even now she felt controversial thinking about what it all meant.

On one hand she hated, no, that wasn’t a strong enough word, she ABHORRED emotional manipulation, yet, she was unable to not sympathize with Regina when it came to this.

She understood all too well why the other woman did what she did, why she wanted to leave a piece of herself with her son when she was sure she had lost him forever. Once upon a time she had been in her shoes and had she been the one about to lose a child that she has been caring for twelve years – if she were strong enough at all to make that sacrifice – she would’ve done the exact same thing.

And it still felt like violation too.

The confusing part was that after some time had passed, and she cooled off from her initial blown up she started to have trouble with deciding which one of them was violated; she for getting real memories and with them a couple of habitual changes, or Regina for having to share her most precious possessions with her of all people and now, even two years later, having to deal with the fact that Emma knew things about the woman’s life that she would have never shared with her ex-enemy unless maybe if tremendous alcohol or either stage of grief was involved.

On the other hand knowing everything Regina knew about her son’s childhood and having the opportunity to have a normal life were the best gifts she could have ever wished for; after all, being a bail bondsperson and a mom when you say it seems far more acceptable than trying to explain being Prince Charming and Snow White’s daughter who at the same time is ‘the Savior’ to a bunch of fairy tale characters who now live in a small town in the United States of America called Storybrooke.

Back in New York life was easier in many ways.

Sometimes she let herself wonder where she would be now if Hook didn’t find a way to return to this world to bring her that potion to help her regain her memories. If she got to live a normal life with Sam Walsh and that relationship had more time to evolve. If she said ‘yes’ to his proposal but didn’t run off without giving an explanation to him as if she just got scared of the commitment.

If sweet, strong and smart Sam – who was in no way connected to the fairytale madness that was her life – didn’t find a way to track the GPS in her car and followed her and Henry back to Storybrooke to try to get an explanation out of her, only to die such a senseless death by the hands of a damned flying monkey at the town’s border.

She never had the time to tell him what was going on. She could only lie to him promising it would be okay all the while knowing that it couldn’t be and he just said he loved her one more time before his eyes closed for the very last time.

He drew his last shaky breath in her arms.

His death was one painful reminder that she was never safe, that what she thought she could have was not in the cards for her.

Remembering that night always brought up the fragmental memory of another, one that even now she considers to be one of the worst nights of her life. It deserves the title even though she hardly has any real memories about those nightmarish hours.

He at least knew what he was doing and what was happening.

Sometimes she dreamt about it. She heard his voice, the cadence of it as he called her ‘Swan’ once more and then stepped right in front of that death curse with a smile on his face, to save her and then spoke no more.

She was beyond furious with him when she didn’t feel like crying about what happened because she believed that her instinctual magic would’ve been enough to protect HER. But that son of a bitch wasn’t willing to let her risk it, not after it already killed Neal, and in the end there was nothing she could do to stop Killian from sacrificing himself so that she could surely live.

He let her go, proving what she couldn’t have been sure of up until that moment, that giving him a chance wouldn’t have been a mistake.

It was scaring her immensely when she thought about how the more time passed the more obvious it became that there was a definite connection between a certain percentage of the dead in the little town.

Sam, Neal, Killian and even Graham all had one thing in common; they had feelings for her.

If she was being honest with herself she reciprocated those feelings for all of them but just around the time she started to accept the depth of them and tried to let her actions speak for themselves she had to bury them six feet deep.

Well, at least she had one of them back.

He WAS dead.

She was at his funeral.

Yet, six weeks later Neal Cassidy just walked back into their lives as if nothing had ever happened to him.

No one had an explanation how he could be back, not his father or Lazarus himself. They were suspicious of him, of course. Emma didn’t let herself hope and to prevent it from happening she was rude and cold to him.

She asked for a DNA test and Gold did all kinds of magical rituals but they all came back to support the miraculous resurrection explanation.

The Pawnshop Owner talked to him a lot and he passed the tests easily but Emma felt like he was going easy on him, wanting this man to be his son so much it was clouding his judgment. She wanted to destroy all doubt from her head so she asked about intimate details of their relationship that made the Dark One avert his gaze but this Neal knew the right answer even to those questions.

There was really no more reason to doubt what he was saying.

These kinds of miracles just didn’t happen even in a town filled with magic so there was crying and hugging mainly with her, Henry and Gold and a celebration for everyone.

Whatever happened to him it didn’t change him much.

If she thought about it, it seemed the experience affected him in one aspect only. The guy who was fighting like a schoolboy with Hook over her was gone. She didn’t miss HIM at all but she missed her friend and she got him back.

She often thought the mystery of what happened to the father of her son when she thought about the possible reason why she kept loosing the men that she let close to herself.

Sometimes she favored the theory that his romantic feelings for her must have been the price of his resurrection, other times she believed that his survival of the Emma Swan Curse had to do with the fact that he had fallen out of love with her before he died and in some moments she was sure that she was just having self-centered and simply had really terrible luck in love.

Something really could have happened during that one year back in the Enchanted Forest that has changed his feelings though. After all she remember their last conversation before his ‘death’ walking towards the town’s square all too well, and how okay he seemed to be with letting her go when she told him that she was considering giving a real chance to Hook even if she wasn’t sure if it was a good idea…

She never saw any indication or heard anything from anyone that Neal had found someone new and she would know if that was the case since he had been working as her deputy after David had announced that he wanted to be with Mary Margaret and her little brother as much as he could after the boy’s birth – not subtly trying to overcompensate for what happened, well, with her.

Neither she nor the Mayor of Storybrooke had any objection towards this switch between the two men.  

Apart from work Deputy Cassidy spent most of his free time with his family; his son and his father. Their boy couldn’t have been more elated to have him back and the same was true to the oldest member of their bloodline.

Gold and Neal were finally mending the bridges that they both thought were burnt irrevocably so many years ago Emma strictly forbade her brain to try and guess an actual number. She couldn’t stop herself from writing it down underneath the rose she just finished drawing and then used up as much graphite as needed to make the number disappear underneath it.

‘Speak of the devil and he shall appear’ or in this case, think about him if you want to get technical, Neal chose this exact moment to walk through the door.

“Hi!” he greeted her with lightness in his voice and step.

Of course, he’s got to do the morning patrol.

“Hi! Any interesting happened?” Emma inquired after closing her notebook, leaving the pencil in it, marking the page as she shifted her focus to her partner.

“Nope. Everything is quiet as usually.”

She grimaced.

He smirked at her.

She hated him for it for only a second before she forgets all about it.

They are starting to be enveloped in silence but it does not have the time to develop into either a comfortable or an awkward one because the phone started to ring.

Emma actually jumped from the shrill voice and Neal just laughed at her as he didn’t get bothered by it at all.

“Do you think we said it enough that we finally jinxed it?”

“Well, this IS Storybrooke…” Emma answered with a lopsided smile on her face clearly almost hopefully – while she completely ignored the muted dread that lurks in the back of her mind – before picking up the device from her table and saying, “This is Sheriff Swan speaking. Please, tell me I can help you.”

There was a pause while Emma was listening to the new information that she was getting from the caller. Her facial expression changed quickly to less and less composed and a half screamed “What?” around halfway of the third sentence she was being told were dead giveaways that something big and definitely bad happened.

The “Are there any injured?” was just the bonus confirmation Neal needed to be ‘sure, sure’ and not just ‘sure’.

“What is it?” the Deputy mouthed to her but Emma just shook her head and lift up her forefinger indicating that he had to wait to get this information until after the call has ended.

She finished the conversation with a, “We are on our way.”

Neal tried to be patient with her but Emma’s unease was tangible.

In her haste to get going as fast as humanly possible she almost managed to push the phone off the table while putting the receiver down and simultaneously trying to don her trademark red leather jacket. The Deputy helpedher with catching the device before it could fall and the movement broke his resolve to wait until his friend got to a place to share the details with him.

“Emma, talk to me! What the hell happened?”

“I am… I am not sure. Apparently some kind of smoke monster showed up at the Diner and possessed Ruby. It somehow made her wolf out without a full moon and attacked your father right in the middle of Granny’s.”

He looked suddenly extremely anxious.

“Ruby? Are there any injuries?” he echoed Emma’s earlier question and grabbed the woman’s arms.

“She is missing but everybody else is fine,” she answered but the reaction she got wasn’t what she expected.

He was still on edge and for a fraction of second she let her brain take apart his reaction in relation to her theories about his love life. Ruby could fit, she believed, but she also knew now was really not the time to gossip with herself about her friends and jump to conclusions as a way to distract herself from thinking about what could await them this time – and curse herself some for getting her wish fulfilled – so she got back to business.

“Why are you acting like this?”

“Henry. He was with him. With my father. They were having breakfast together.”

“Oh…” was all that left the woman’s mouth and thoughts of possible hidden romances flew out of the window and left the Storybrooke area and the planet and this universe.

They, without talking about it, started to move towards the door at the exact same time and kept moving in sync. Emma shook her head to get out of the stupor that has descended on her brain from this new piece of information.

“Wasn’t he supposed to be with Regina this morning?”

“Yeah, but we traded today for Sunday. She is planning to take him riding so we switched and I left him with Papa until I was finished here.”

“Okay. They said no one was injured, right?”

The question was directed at him and Neal looked back at her so that she was reminded it was her that talked to the person reporting what happened.

“Right. There were no injuries.” This time it’s a declarative sentence and with that they leave the station in a hurry but not without adding, “And how many times do I have to tell the two of you, tell me when there is a change in ‘Henry time’.”

He mumbled a “Sorry,” before opening and closing the door for them.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Regina Mills was in the middle of making a decision about a certain detail concerning her plans for this evening.

It took her years to get here and a long time to finally agree but now that she did she wanted tonight to be perfect. That included finding just the right dress to wear for this umpteenth first date which was why she had all types of outfits strategically placed on her bed and practically every available surface in her bedroom.

It was making her feel silly for spending such a long time on deciding but the fact that at least she narrowed her numerous options down to two finalists comforted her.

The two dresses were similarly styled and she actually felt partial to the grey one but she also knew that her companion for the evening would prefer the blue color more. Normally it wouldn’t be a question for her which one to choose yet she felt conflicted. And then she felt conflicted about feeling conflicted.

For a fraction of a second she let herself hate the reminder of how much she had changed now but then she pushed the thought into the back of her mind, knowing that excitement and fear should be considered a natural part of this particular process just as much as the feeling of wanting to please.

After letting her emotions free reign, even if just for such a couple of seconds, she felt better and started to strip down to her underwear to don the dress she chose in the end for a final inspection.

She had learnt the lesson the excruciating way to be prepared for anything when she got close to a certain four letters long word that should not be said, no, not even in her head, lest it gets spooked and flees from her like it did whenever she got close to it in her life.

No matter how long or hard she tried to deny it, she could felt it again and it made the once Evil Queen as close to happy as she was capable these days. 

She was angry at Fate, Destiny – or whatever you want to call it – long enough; first for destroying what she believed was her only chance at happiness and then, for pouring this second one at her like a bucket of ice cold water when she was nowhere near ready to handle it, let alone seize it.

She was angry at the world and almost everyone in it long enough too and now, finally, she felt like she was ready to let all that go and move on.

It was time.

She was strong enough now, strong enough to handle this the right way. She didn’t want to wait any longer. She was done avoiding and fighting and basically running instead of acting and being brave. Once she made the decision that she wanted to find out if pursuing this relationship was worth the risk it all became much easier.

She fought tooth and nail against letting herself be vulnerable again, after all, for years she promised herself she would never let herself open up to anyone ever again. But circumstances change. People change. Second chances are offered from places you’d least expect and once broken woman grow strong enough to risk their heart once more.

When she decided to follow the advices she got on moving on and putt her doubts to rest she knew that agreeing would, in a way, always be a reminder of how different things could have been if she just made different decisions the first time around.

But back then it didn’t seem possible that this romance could work out for obvious reasons.

She walked to the mirror to see herself one more time. The blue dress fit her perfectly she noted as she smoothed her hand over her belly.

That smile that appeared on her face made her pause. The first person to admit that she still had trouble understanding the different versions of ‘affections’ she was now letting herself feel freely, was still her.

This time, this feeling wasn’t the same as the one she remembered all too clearly but not at all in a bad way. Just a variant of what she had in what had been a different life and literally a different world.

This was neither that place anymore nor was she the same so it seemed logical to not experience this gift the same way again.

You only got one first love after all.

There was no human being on this planet – or on any other – that knew their own self completely, no soul that didn’t take themselves by surprise sometimes so it was a rocky learning curve, this opening up and getting to know oneself process, but it all got clearer and clearer the more she let her heart take control for a change and just feel.

And this felt right.

Of course, it wasn’t easy but easy wasn’t in her nature, not on the long run.

Her reverie got interrupted by the buzzing of her cell phone.

She jumped from the sudden disruption of the previous silence, put down the earring she was trying on and then scolded herself for getting caught by surprise.

She checked the caller ID.

To say she was surprised by this particular call was an understatement. This wasn’t their unspoken agreement.

She shook her head and moved her thumb towards the left side of the cell first to decline but when there was nothing but a hair width distance between her finger and the screen she changed direction and put her pointer finger on the ‘answer’ option.

She didn’t get to say anything, scolding or otherwise, not even a greeting before the person on the other end started to speak with a frantic speed.

Regina’s expression turned dark in an instant all traces of smiles and happiness were gone in an instant.

“I’ll be there as fast as I can,” was all she uttered before she ended the call.

For a second she battled with her instinct that told her to just teleport to her destination because that was the fastest way available to her. She, pretty uncharacteristically, fumbled with where to put her cell in her frustration before she found her purse while pros and cons clashed against each other in her mind about how she should get to her intended destination.

She knew she had to stay strong and keep the promise she made to herself even if it was incredibly hard to do so right now.

In the end she started to run as fast as she could, first downstairs then outside to her car, all the while trying very hard not think about the fact that she could put the worries weighing on her to rest in about thirty seconds instead of the approximately fifteen minutes it will take her if she is running to get to her car and then drove.

She was not going to risk paying the price.

Not again.

She was just praying that this, whatever was happening right now was not part of the debt she was yet due to settle.


	2. Wave After Wave Part 1

There was a painfully loud screeching noise accompanying the ‘parking technique’ Emma chose which, in this instance, equaled practically standing on the breaks to slow the cruiser to a stop in front of Granny’s. She was moving out of her seat as soon as it was possible while Neal was still glued to his.

The man looked like a little kid who just experienced an extreme roller coaster ride which he didn’t participate in voluntarily but was forced to endure for some reason that was completely unfathomable to him.

He needed a few seconds to relax his muscles enough to let go the parts of the dashboard and door he clung to. Next was unbuckling the seat belt he did feel compelled to use after the first sixty seconds of their trip. He was absolutely positive that if he was sitting in a car next to a stunt double, who would be performing the tricks for some high budget blockbuster, it would’ve been less eventful than the trip he had next to Emma Swan.

He actually feared for his life and with good reason.

There were multiple close encounters with cars and walls, and there was one traffic sign that will most definitely be needing replacement after today. That end result was actually pretty good, statistically speaking, considering how many more ‘victims’ there could’ve been – including them.

The most stressful three minutes were definitely when the Sheriff let go of the steering wheel with one hand and started to dig into her jeans for her cell then proceeded to look at the screen instead of the road to dial Regina and give her an update on what happened.  

That’s when they almost died and Neal promised himself he would never ever frown at any media that advised against making a call and driving at the same time.

By the time the Deputy’s attention focused back on the outside world as he stepped outside the car and onto the pavement Emma was halfway to the door already. He looked behind the car and saw the impressive skid mark the tires left; he also checked the damage left behind by the broken off rearview mirror on his side of the car.

He shook his head then searched for Emma, half expecting to not even find her in his sight anymore but immediately realizing that his assumption was wrong.

The woman was standing in front of the building and she was observing the damage that’s been done to it. The front door was almost completely off of its hinges under the Granny’s sign definitely won’t be alight tonight.

It could have been worse, he expected worse, but it was still more than enough to give way to a new surge to both of their anxiety. He quickened his steps and in the exact second he reached Emma’s side the Sheriff started to move.

The glass shreds from one of the front windows crunched underneath her feet as she practically run into the establishment.

Neal followed suit only one and a half steps behind.

Inside it became apparent that no one even noticed their noisy arrival or that they even entered.

It was understandable in hindsight, since the place was buzzing with nervous energy. Everyone was having discussions and in a few cases arguments about what happened. They were standing in a half circle at the end of the building.

Emma was not surprised that they were pretty freaked out.

From the amount of people inside the Sheriff was sure no one left since the incident. She would bet it had nothing to do with sticking around because they were supposed to for helping the investigation and everything to do with the fact that the unfortunate costumers that were here during the mysterious smoke monster attack knew very well that remaining here was the safer option when leaving they could be faced with God only knows what on the streets of Storybrooke.

“Is everyone all right?” was the first thing that left the Sheriff’s mouth.

All talking stopped, suddenly every pair of eyes were on her and her partner. The question was genuine but she knew what went through every single one of their heads with the speed of light; that she only cared about her son in that moment. She knew they were right. They knew they were right. There was no reason pretending, yet they did, and started to nod, some even voiced yeses.

Watching them she was reminded why it almost happened, the memory of it suddenly yesterday fresh in her mind just as much as it was in every citizen’s present.

Remembering provided a temporary distraction and gave a break to their brains from guessing about what went and will go wrong this time with this brand new treat in and to their lives, and hence it was very much welcomed by all. Emma on the other hand would have rather forgot it ever happened and never wished more fervently that she could be only a mother in these situations, or hell just the Sheriff and not the freaking prophesied Savior of all fairy tale creatures.

If she wasn’t no one would’ve batted an eyelash for putting her own family first but – because it seemed to be in the job description of ‘the Savior’ – they expected her to be public property.

She knew that it was just one of those things that worked even more skewed here in this strange little town and came with the title the original curse gave her but that didn’t mean she liked it and she certainly did not act like it on more than one occasion.

That’s why Albert Spencer almost managed to replace her as sheriff.

The ex-king/district attorney had been really persistent and kept listing really good arguments against her filling the position from like how she wasn’t even qualified to how many people had died on her watch.

He made it public knowledge that Rumplestiltskin tricked the community to elect her when Sheriff Humbert died and as icing on the cake he somehow got his hands on pictures of her watching movies on her lap top in the middle of a work day at the Sheriff’s Station and put it into the Storybrooke Mirror next to an article written by one Sydney Glass who was all too happy to provide just the right words to make Emma’s life harder.

Even now she could almost hear Spencer’s words. They were echoing in the crowd present in the diner as they remembered them too. He accused her of how she would risk either or all of them for the sake of her son and, of course, he attacked Neal’s deputy position too, saying that he had the same shortcomings and weakness in their boy. He brought up the unexplained resurrection that they still had no explanation for and then went in for the kill with bringing Regina and their relationship with her into the argument.

The way things progressed Emma was pretty sure that soon she would be waiting tables at Granny’s if she wanted a steady income. But then, the Mayor came to their rescue as their knight in shining armor thanks to the serendipity that she had someone who knew Nate Brandon’s fairy tale personality well enough that they were able to put together all the little signs; like the phrases he liked to use, his nervous habit of playing with a coin and other small things that they realized his true identity despite the shapeshifting spell that Spencer acquired from somewhere they were yet to figure out about and shared this information with the town’s leader.

The potion or whatever they used did a marvelous job, the magic in it strong enough to give even a proper backstory to the puny excuse for a man pretty much writing him into Storybrooke’s history as if he had been always there at the center of the action, helping.

If saving the day by breaking the glamour wasn’t enough, Regina even gave a speech about their ‘not exactly perfect’ Savior to the people of Storybrooke, and what they can thank her for – even if she does put her own flesh and blood ahead of them or maybe exactly because of that because would they really want someone who thinks like THAT to be in charge of the town – which has convinced every single soul despite or especially because of whom it came from.

After all the stress and playing the blaming game it actually brought Emma Swan to tears to hear the words and see the reactions to them. But there weren’t just salty water drops running down her face she laughed too seeing their competition’s reaction and when, in the heat of the moment, Spencer accused Regina of never atoning for the sins she has committed back in the old land.

The woman suggested she will if every single one of them goes to trial because of their past deeds. She even politely inquired which law system he wanted them to be judged for, after all, as DA he was more familiar with the methods of this world than she was.

The man’s reaction was hilarious when he realized that under the stress of the situation he quite uncharacteristically dug a pretty deep hole for himself with hoping for righteous indignation from the people perhaps spiced with an actual mob that would keep Regina busy while he disappeared to recuperate.

The moment it became clear that nothing of the sort was going to happen he lightning fast backpedalled into accepting that this realm was a clean slate for all.

Not that it did any good for him or his partner.

Emma arrested both of them before they could even attempt to flee. She took them to the station.

 If she had run into someone from the future on the way and they have asked her to guess that which one of the men her subconscious would like to see burn she would have said Spencer without a doubt.

She would have been mistaken.

One wrong comment at the wrong time and Nate Brandon had different things on his mind that to be a pig and talk about how Emma’s attitude must either come from on period bitchiness or sexual frustration.

Back in the here and now, it definitely felt like the official tabula rasa worked.

That Regina speech seemed to have more than enough weight still as the crowd as one decided the same way and there was not one person objecting in any way, instead they slowly started to part in front of Emma without prompting so that she could see her son and put her mind at ease before starting to investigate.

When the wave of human movements stopped she was able to spot Henry in the back with Belle and Gold, unharmed. He was still animatedly speaking to his grandfather.

“You okay, kid?” Emma asked, frowning that the boy managed to immerse himself in the conversation he was having so deeply he didn’t even realize she had arrived.

Henry tensed only for a second, then answered, “There isn’t a scratch on me.”

He smiled, suddenly all goofy, and a significant amount of her worries left her body in a gust of air that collided with the same type of exhale coming from Neal’s lungs.

That’s when Granny spoke up, “Sheriff Swan, Deputy Cassidy.”

Her greeting was strained and coming from this side of the counter. It was weird to see the usually well put together woman not nearly close to well put together.

“I told you on the phone that there are no injuries. Everyone is fine here but Ruby IS missing and that monster is still out there, free to do whatever it wants to my girl and play another round of these never ending sick games with us.”

Emma could feel the stress rolling off the owner of the diner and even if it was still hard for her to shift from ‘mother mode’ to ‘sheriff mode’ she knew she had to.

The fact that she had seen that Henry was unharmed made it easier to force flip the switch. She was halfway through formulating her first question when she felt electricity in the air and involuntary looked back towards the entrance.

In about three seconds Regina Mills rushed through the threshold and threw her off completely.

Granny was not exactly thrilled by the newly arrived woman’s timing; in fact, she looked like she’d be clawing her own face off with her nails if she still had the ability to grow them out into the deadly weapons they could once upon a time turn into. That or the faces of others, she didn’t seem to be in a mood where she’d be picky about that.

“Henry!” Regina exclaimed.

The name flew off her lips filled with worry.

“I am fine, Mom!” he tried to soothe his clearly upset adoptive mother as he moved a bit closer to her and away from his grandfather.

The Mayor only had eyes for her son as she strode to him and then took inventory of his physical appearance quickly. She actually started to check the joints of his hands and when she found those in perfect condition, stared right into his soul to make sure he was not hiding anything from her.

Henry was not thrilled by what he felt was babying but he knew his mother needed it so he let it go on with only a slight grimace until the eye contact was made between them and he saw his mother’s eyes shine with suspicion in them.

That was the moment in her inventory/examination Regina froze.

Henry didn’t understand the cause and felt panic bubbling up in chest but his mother didn’t even register the reaction. She put her hands on his shoulders and looked UP at him with a sad smile on her face.

She hadn’t had the moment until this emergency situation where she registered the fact that he is taller than her now.

They were the same height for what, at least to her, seemed like such a long time that she thought it would never change. But it did and the realization left her feeling like she lost something precious that could never come back, ever.

She could still put her right hand on his cheek like she always did at least. The familiarity of that was comforting enough that it nudged her back into the outside world from the seconds she had spent in her own head, remembering and also saying goodbye to the routine that existed in these moments for years.

The little and yet huge moment between them was the center of attention. Neal could feel that they were starting to push their luck as the tension kept growing in the room so he decided to deter the attention the scene was getting.

He became all business and moved closer to his father. “So what happened? Do you know anything about this smoke monster and why does it want you dead?”

It worked. The crowd turned to them as if they were a single organism. They all wanted to know where this conversation would go. Regina used the opening to move next to Henry and angled her body towards the Pawnshop Owner while Emma moved in to give her son an awkward one armed hug opposite the brunette.

The Mayor very purposefully made sure that she didn’t even spare a glimpse towards Emma. That alone told her that she was not off the hook.

Gold started to speak and it captivated everyone’s full attention.

“Smoke monster? Who told you that?” Gold was actually confused by that reference.

Neal looked back and forth between Granny and Emma not knowing which one of them came up with the ‘nickname’ but his father dismissed his own question quickly and continued with a barely concealed _“what the hell son,”_ on his mind.

“More like Peter Pan’s shadow trying to exact revenge on me for killing its corporeal form!” Gold spew out like jumping from one to the other should be considered a fairly basic thought process, like it was the obvious conclusion.

The second the name was uttered Henry was suddenly in a much tighter moms’ sandwich.

“Are you sure about this?” Neal demanded confirmation looking back and forth between his son, his mothers and his father.

Belle was the one giving him answer. “Ruby, or rather that thing that possessed her, told us so before she turned into a wolf.”

It was clear Neal wanted to hear more when he nodded and draw a few small circles into the air with some nice wrist work, asking the Librarian to keep talking.

She did, slowly getting momentum with her recap.

“The morning was quite normal. We were just sitting here, eating when out of nowhere it was getting dark, in the morning. Then black smoke started to pour into the diner from the outside. None of us knew what was happening. Rumple tried to contain it but his magic didn’t affect it at all. It just went straight for Ruby and all of that black substance disappeared inside her through her skin and eyes and mouth. When there was no more left, it reappeared in her irisless eyes, on the white of her sclera like black ink drops in white water.”

She gulped and gave her vocal cords a little bit of rest.

“After a few seconds the appearance of her eyes was back to normal but the way she spoke was all wrong – nothing like how Ruby usually speaks. It was so surreal. That thing in her said that it was Peter Pan’s shadow back from the beyond to get revenge. It was so confident. The way it told us that there was nothing that we could do to stop it was terrifying. The following demonstration, turning Ruby into a wolf and going straight for my husband’s neck, was horribly convincing.”

She looked towards the broken window and door behind them and suddenly it’s clear what happened, what Gold had to do to their friend to protect himself.

Now that Pan’s return was confirmed the mood of Gold, along with everyone else’s, was suddenly more understandable. After all the town had a rather grim past with this particular villain and so did the Dark One. Not to mention if Rumplestiltskin was close to panic then everyone in their right mind should panic too, probably with full force.

Pan was a sore subject for Henry, Emma, Regina and Neal as well. The news of his return made all of Henry’s parents edgy and the boy felt the need to try to relieve some of the pressure that was suddenly on their shoulders.

“I was here, sitting right next to Grandpa when Ruby attacked.”

He winced seeing that his intended reassurance was having the exact opposite effect so he quickly added, “Whatever that thing was it didn’t even spare me a glance, it just very theatrically made a threat and then run after the…” he searched for the right word for a second, “incident with the window and the door happened.”

That was still not good enough insurance for either of his parents since they all know that that the bonding ritual they have agreed to between Gold and Henry, after what almost happened when he got shot, made it impossible for anyone to cause harm to the boy without bringing down his grandfather, the Dark One himself, first.

“How the hell did he come back?” Regina demanded to know directing her question to Gold.

“Dead is dead,” Neal concurred following Regina’s lead. “That’s what you have always told me. You stabbed him with your knife. He was dead and his Shadow was also destroyed. I was there, too. I’ve seen it burn and turn to...”

“What?” Gold, Emma and Regina asked ridiculously synchronized as Neal paused because of a realization they yet had no idea about.

“…smoke.”

There was silence for a couple of seconds as everyone analyzed what they just heard.

“Well, I am no expert on what happens to shadows when they, let’s say, ‘die’, son but this one seems to be the kind that was able to find its way back among the living.”

“Are you absolutely, one hundred percent sure about this, papa? Just because it said that it’s Pan it doesn’t make it true.”

Gold took his time to think before answering even though a part of him found it ridiculous that Neal doubted his conclusion. Belle stepped very close to him to squeeze his hand in support.

Emma looked at the gesture longingly with a half smile on her face. Regina just rolled her eyes.

“It knew enough details about me, about what happened back in Neverland that only the people who were there with us could possibly now. If it’s after Henry it obviously knew it had to go through me first to be able to get to him. However it’s a known fact that I have made many enemies in my life – it comes with living for hundreds of years and, well, being the Dark One for most of it – and this could be any one of them with some really powerful help. Whatever or whoever this black smoke entity was it wants me dead but if it thinks that it can just…”

A loud crash coming from the door’s direction stopped him from finishing his tirade.

Everyone turned to see what happened.

One bruised and battered Ruby Lucas chose this moment to stumble into the diner. Everyone froze and after a couple of seconds the injured woman collapsed down onto the floor.


	3. Wave After Wave Part 2

Granny leapt to her granddaughter with a quickness betraying her age while almost all spectators were still looking for their jaws on the floor. She checked the girl’s pulse and sighed in relief when she found a bit slower than usual but still steady rhythm.

“Her heart is beating.”

The moment that joy bringing sentence was uttered the entire room got quiet.

The Sheriff and the Mayor knew why that was very well. Regina, not having a different option, looked directly at Emma for the first time since she arrived. It was more than that, actually. It was the first time the Mayor made contact with the Sheriff voluntarily in over eight weeks. Emma knew what came next without words needing to be used, a public demonstration of how much better she was with her magic.

She gulped.

She wanted to object. She wanted to go there to Regina, grab her shoulders and shake her and demand to know what the hell she thought she was doing after all, she knew. For God’s sake, she was the one who put the binding on her with Gold’s help and then continued to explain the theoretical side of magic in their lessons believing that that could help somehow even if Emma was a unicorn, a damn unique case.

Then the thing that should not be mentioned or thought of happened and the Mayor refused to see her or talk to her let alone be her mentor any longer.

The only contact they have had in the last two months had been limited maybe a dozen meetings when there was simply no other way for exchanging Henry between their homes than to directly meet or just see each other from a distance and when Emma found the letter she wrote, unopened, on her table at the Sheriff’s Station with the words “Stop it, Swan,” written underneath Emma’s letters that spelled Regina’s name.

For the first few days their boy tried to figure out what happened from her, but Emma refused to give him an explanation and after what she presumed were similarly failed attempts with Regina, the issue was never mentioned by him again.

He just seemed to accept it and that more than anything unnerved Emma.

Normally her son would’ve been his sneaky little operation creating self trying to figure out what happened and how to fix it but he didn’t do anything of the sort. Emma considered offering him money to find out what he had been told by his other mother, or if that was what stopped him, but she was not sure she wanted to get her hands on that information.

It very well could have been that he was just growing up and was confident enough that they would figure this out on their own in time just like they did so many times before.

Well, there was a chance.

Emma let a fantasy form in which this situation was going to be enough to break the ice between her and the adoptive mother of her son. She could almost see the whole thing playing out with her mind’s eye.

She walked to Regina, they made eye contact and then Regina pretended that it was Emma who was doing the healing. Then they would finally talk and agree to forget that night as if it never happened to begin with.

The picture distorted fast though when the reality of what will most likely happen instead of making peace slammed into her like the guilty car in a hit and run slams into its victim. In an instant she knew with perfect clarity that this truce is only a show put on for the citizens present. That it’s only a necessary act and even if this smoke monster issue basically forced Regina to make compromises, and actually interact with her, if there was one person in the whole of creation stubborn enough to keep holding a grudge through a Storybrooke type of town emergency it was Regina Mills.

She was a real pro at it after all.

Emma was surprised that no one outside of their immediate family figured out about what happened between them – though considering the ‘season of peace’ vacation they had been living in the last few months she was pretty sure that the two of them and the progression of their magic lessons had been the last thing on the people’s minds.

Especially, after she stopped causing trouble for them.

They had no idea what really happened. And now, now the Savior and the Queen had to look the part of a duo that had been practicing magic multiple times every single week in the last circa seven months and actually made progress.

Emma was certain that this was going to be all kinds of awkward no matter what how it plays out because after the almost four months that they actually did train she was still on beginner level, or as Regina more colorfully put it, a first grade level is a exaggeration but she was getting there.

She looked around to found that the Mayor was now standing next to Ruby and Granny. She looked her in the eyes pointedly then gestured with her hands towards the girl on the ground and then proceeded to turn away from Emma.

The Savior was confused because Regina didn’t really offer her any sign that would calm her drumming heart about how they were going to handle this situation.

Suddenly the warning words of the Mayor echoed in Emma’s head about how no matter what kind of binding they use on her she could be able to break through it given the right circumstances.

She just hoped that this was just a random thought and not her brain being quicker than her conscious, because that would mean there will be no help coming from the brunette and then she will most likely panic, blow their cover and cause an even bigger mess than the one they were already in.

Still the unexpected confirmation to her conclusion about how the other woman was going to handle this situation was the worst part of it all, and even though she had just predicted this the disappointment coming as early as the hoping started stings badly. She was used to it though and preferred that happened now and not later when she had time to feed this feeling inside her.

It was a nice detour for her thoughts from the fact that she should do something with her magic that she was cut off from because she literally set someone on fire.

Emma knew what her role was supposed to be in this scenario; she should kneel beside the waitress/werewolf and just fix her. Show Storybrooke how good she was now with her powers.

 She suspected that practically forcing her hands to do this had more to do with getting some form of revenge on her on Regina’s part even if logically the Mayor had to understand that she was working against herself as well.  

Yet, in that woman’s head showing the town how incompetent Emma was, what she had to, or from their point of view has to deal with as her teacher, would suffice nicely as a type of revenge that she would allow herself to have. Same if Emma managed to break the bond because then bye-bye being ordinary, welcome back, constant worry and magical mishaps and complete and utter humiliation.

She had to go with it, she knew. It wasn’t like she didn’t have to try this sometime again so why not now in the middle of this new crisis. She just really hated the task waiting for her because healing and her did not mix.

Hell, she couldn’t heal herself.

She was mostly useless when it came to perform any type of more advanced magic. She had only been good at being the battery, and nothing more.

It made her angry and frustrated and – there weren’t many emotions that she hated more – useless. What made matters worse was that accordingly to her ex-teacher these were the exact mind states that one should avoid while trying to fix physical injuries with magic.

There was one exception, one instance when she actually accomplished this task.

It had happened right in the middle of the battle with the Wicked Witch because when or where else?

There was just one gigantic issue with it.

She was only able to recollect the event and what had lead up to it like it all happened in a dream; some short moments were clear as crystal and she felt connected to them while hours got entirely lost to her. No matter how she had tried to combine the details that she dug out of her own and the memories of survivors of that horrible night, she still couldn’t repeat the action based solely on those.

She really, really wanted to be able to heal for obvious reasons but the scenes she had to force herself to go over again and again in her head were torturing her worse than her most horrid nightmares.

She hated talking about that dreadful night and reliving the heart break, yet she kept forcing and forcing those who had lived to talk about what happened in detail. She needed to figure it out and for a while it seemed like she was getting closer and closer to have the full picture but predictably the more she pushed it the more the solution stayed out of her reach.

As a last ditch effort she started to use a dream catcher.

She had all of their recollections in her head but they didn’t help with her own memories. If anything the different perspectives and deemed important details made it more confusing to put what she did remember together.

It was confusing, and painful to realize that which was her own blood or tears and which was someone else’s.

She wanted so hard to remember what made her not fail for once but for that she paid the price of having a panorama view of the faces of the dead and the dying in her mind.  

She didn’t have memories about Henry being there, at all. When she first heard from him what happened it brought her to tears. Her son had told her the details with brutal honesty you can only expect from someone so young but wouldn’t, because they usually literally aren’t able.

Her son was.

He told her about Neal on his knees, Killian’s last joke, Happy’s bloody chest and Doc’s broken bones with excruciatingly vivid details that crushed her and not just because it was hard to hear the content but because it was unnerving to the hear her son talk like that.

It made her chest constrict painfully.

She was pretty sure that he had recited Zelena’s taunts word for word to her. The Wicked Witch was delirious with victory so close. Now that she had a brother Emma couldn’t understand how anyone could feel like that about their own flesh and blood. Must have been because she wasn’t a crazy psychopath unlike that lady and didn’t wish to erase his or anyone else’s existence for that matter.

Seeing him saying goodbye to a bloody and broken Regina through his eyes hit her almost as hard. The tears stung his eyes as he told his dying mother how much he loved her how much he missed her. He only just gained back his memories about her. She just become Mom again after being Mayor Mills for weeks.

Knowing everything there was to know about that night, even things she shouldn’t, and still not succeeding in repeating the healing made Emma realize that she had to work on figuring out what was going on inside her own head.

After all, magic was supposed to be emotion.

She was so frustrated with trying to analyze her own damn feelings again and again and failing even at that.

She knew herself enough to be sure she must have wanted to save Regina. That there was no way she was gonna let Henry go through losing a mother if there was anything she could do to prevent it but she wanted to save Walsh too, and nothing happened when she hold him.

She was sure that THIS TIME she must have felt furious as hell because enough people had died on her watch already.

Anger and she was pretty certain, desperation had to be part of it too. These were the exact emotions that she was advised to avoid at all cost while trying to do this type of magic.

 Of course she still tried to do it with mixing these feelings but she, without an exception, failed.

She just couldn’t repeat the energy transfer with anyone else. Damn her true love created magic that had to be the type that worked very differently than the ‘regular’ magic most people with this ability had access to. Damn the fact that she grew up in a world where her brain got wired in a way that it could not handle what was supposed to be her greatest gift.

When she got fed up, Archie – who tried to help her as well – suggested that she tried to concentrate some other aspect of the process.

That had lead her to analyze how performing healing affected her physically hoping that was the missing link or that it would bring more of her feelings back. The way she saw it happen in every single one of the memories she had permission to access, it seemed like she was in shock or having some kind of seizure.

She damned her own blood loss and exhaustion for making her forget and turn everything so incredibly murky and hard and just overall exhaustingly complicated.

The tremors raking her felt familiar somehow but at the same time they couldn’t have been more foreign and she had no idea if they had any role at all and if they did how could she to call them forth.

No one saw what happened at the very end as she blinded everyone present with the white light that was bursting out from somewhere inside her body. All everyone agreed on was that when they could see again, Regina wasn’t dying anymore.

The Queen just opened her eyes, proceeded to stand up, with barely any help from a rapidly weakening Savior and then – after getting hit by some incredible strong attacks a couple of times that Emma helped her reflect with offering herself up as a battery – moped the floor with her sister’s behind.

Regina was on fire in this fight she was phenomenal and powerful, so powerful; she even opened a portal back to Oz.

True it needed almost every drop of both Emma, Regina and Gold’s energy to maintain for those lifelong seeming thirty-three seconds but it was enough for Mary Margaret, David, Belle, Robin and even Henry to join their forces, advance on the drained red head woman and sent her back to the world she had came from.

The portal closed and that’s when the prize of using such a huge amount of magic showed.

The surrounding buildings and the clock tower were leveled. Thank God that they evacuated everyone. The only thing that saved them that the Savior and the Queen somehow managed to put up a protective barrier to keep them from disintegrating as well. It truly used up every last bit of their power though.

Regina who controlled the magic’s flow had collapsed next to a by then already completely unresponsive Emma finally letting go of the other woman’s hand. Gold lost consciousness in the meantime too and that left the others without magical help to get to the hospital and to help what those three clearly needed.

David took his daughter in his arms, Henry with help from Mary Margaret, got his mother and Robin helped Belle to move her husband. It wasn’t an easy task and it became obvious very fast that they needed a much faster way to get to the hospital than on foot when they were getting more and more exhausted by the second.

Once they left the destruction site, Mary Margaret actually suggested stealing the first minivan they had encountered and then went and hotwired it – something she had learnt from Emma during one of their more freeform mother daughter bonding night that involved maybe a little too much drinking.

Once they had gotten there Whale examined both women.

He was quick and efficient and sent them both to be prepared by the clearly incomplete staff. Then he told the strange little family unit waiting for news that they both needed blood transfusions but while Regina definitely needed to be opened up and operated on, and very quickly, Emma would only need massive amounts of stitches – if the CT confirmed his diagnose.

David without a thought offered his blood, knowing that he was a match.

Whale accepted that without a question and didn’t even try to talk him out of it. Something was bugging Mary Margaret and during her husband’s automatic offer she realized what.

She shook her head and demanded an explanation from Whale, telling him what he was saying didn’t make sense since Emma healed Regina of the blood loss and they all saw it and the woman was not injured again later.

Robin quickly started to move towards the doctor, prepared to use muscle force on him if it turned out that he was indeed trying to use this opportunity for some personal vendetta but Henry stood in front of him.

All the boy said to the man, to all of them, that there was no way that physically hurting the only man in the town that could help his mothers and his grandfather was a good idea, even if he would certainly deserve it if he was using this emergency to get his revenge on his mother.

Whale understood the threat that came from a Regina channeling Henry very clearly.

It was effective in an unexpected way since it prompted Whale to be brutally honest with them and say that at that moment it really didn’t matter if they trusted him or not, he was their only chance unless they just wanted Regina and – if they kept him away long enough – perhaps Emma to die from the blood loss and possible internal injuries.

Then he continued with some bad news.

Since he was Regina’s physician throughout the years of the Dark Curse he knew everything there was to know about her health including that she had a really rare blood type. Usually the hospital had it in more than enough quantity for any occasion – Regina’s own policy to keep herself reassured in a world without magic – but the flying monkey’s earlier attack destroyed their entire supply.

He got quiet for a second and Mary Margaret could see that he remembered something that could help HIM and Regina and then after a prompt from her he told his once-one-night-stand that his head is not exactly a computer but if he recollects it correctly there was one person that they should be able to get hold of fast enough in this chaos who has the same blood type as Regina.

Captain Hook had been in the hospital when he got hit by Greg Mendel aka Owen Flynn and the obligatory tests results showed that he was a match to the Queen.

Whale first didn’t understand the quiet that followed the good news then David told him that Killian Jones died earlier that night.

Their chances looked grim but in the end it was sheer luck and Henry that saved the day.

He saw the devastated look on Robin’s face and it just came to him like he knew it from somewhere, somehow; maybe an other world, maybe his future self – they had to test the thief.

He was right.

Robin wasn’t just a match to Regina, he was a match to anyone with his o negative blood.

David and he were quickly taken to a room to get their blood into bags while Whale determined from the meanwhile completed scans that Emma had no internal dangerous internal injuries.

The Doctor offered Mary Margaret the chance to do the sewing and since there was a time when she actually helped out, and did sutured together smaller wounds, she agreed and he left to save the life of the Queen.

Whale had been in the OR for six straight hours to repair all the damage done to the injured woman’s body. As he later shared, the strain of whatever she has done with her magic neutralized even the healing energy the Savior transferred to her earlier, leaving her in a much worse condition that she was originally in.

As soon as Emma was conscious enough – which was about eight hour later – and found out what happened, what she was able to do, she wanted to do repeat the feat but couldn’t even stand up let alone call forth some healing energy.

She had to accept that their only option remained the good old Planet Earth medical science and natural healing because, well, Gold was in the room next to Emma’s getting fluids through IV after almost dying from the excretion needed to hold himself back from obeying Zelena’s orders coming through his dagger and then helping to open up the portal to Oz.

Of course, the damned fairy dust was no good in situations like this. Neither were any of the Fairies. At least they managed to get rid of the monkeys. That counted for something.

Emma got all kinds of explanations about what happened or more importantly how it happened but neither was definite.  Everyone was just guessing about why she had trouble controlling her power and why it seemed to work just fine when she was combining it with Regina’s.

For the first part the Mayor liked to blame her personality, the Pawnshop Owner the fact that she grew up in a world without magic and only learnt of her abilities when she was nearing thirty but her personal favorite was her Mother’s idea about how that wall she had around her heart was stopping her.

They didn’t have explanations for the second part though, like at all, apart from that crazy thing Gold once said.

It made sense in a weird way but it creeped her out too, big time.

He believed that, with the right influence – Emma now knew that meant without him manipulating her throughout all her life – Regina could have had the same type of white magic as she does, but because that wasn’t the case, quite the opposite in fact, the two of them possess something that could be called a full spectrum – especially because Regina wasn’t natural yet beyond powerful by only learning the craft.

He actually has thrown around statements like there is no limit to what they could achieve together given the right circumstances.

Emma always felt the pressing urge to laugh when she remembered that because, as of yet, she couldn’t conjure up a fireball without causing second degree burns in better cases to herself. Regina had to tend to her wounds with ointments and her trademark snark on more than a couple of occasions.

That’s when her thoughts get interrupted by Regina clearing her throat.

Emma desisted the thinking and remembering and general stalling, just as she knew she should, and tried to concentrate after kneeling next to Ruby’s prone form.

She was concentrating on the differences of then and now more than ever and tried to focus on those, trusting that bringing forth her powers wouldn’t take much more than her sincerely and strongly wanting and wishing it. At least she hoped so because she didn’t really have any other idea and now it certainly looked like Regina will not be willing to give her either a figurative or a literal hand with this.

She was waiting for something to happen, anything that would indicate that Regina did remove the shackles from her magic or that she can will them into nonexistence.

Nothing of the sort happened.

She took a deep breath and then put her hands about three inches above the waitress’ body.

After clearing her mind she brought her good memories with the unconscious girl to the forefront of her mind. There was many to choose from in the last, almost five years from working together to saving each other’s lives on multiple occasions.

Still nothing happened. Something was missing. She didn’t feel anything stirring inside her.

There wasn’t real life and death situation and her brain, her emotions and magic all knew it.

Emma didn’t know what she should try as failure squeezes her chest. Regina knelt down next to the frustrated Savior and the blond woman believed for a second that she just going to take over but that’s not what happened.

The Mayor moved her lips to her ears and whispers words that change everything.

“There was never a binding that could hold your power, Emma. That’s why Pan’s bracelet failed in your case. The whole story about the special ritual was a lie and it worked. You were able to control your magic for these last three months without breaking a sweat. You can do this. Heal her.”

Emma was in a wind whirl of emotions suddenly.

She couldn’t believe Gold and Regina did this to her but she also couldn’t deny the fact that the placebo worked. She was just fine. If she was honest with herself she would have known. She would have recognized the sign in her tirelessness, abundance of energy and grown physical power.

She fooled herself and it worked.

She redoubled her efforts but still nothing happened.

It made her so frustrated she closed her eyes. After a couple of seconds she practically felt half her brain doing what she should and the other already contemplating on giving up and just admitting defeat. She found some strange serenity in this trying and knowing it was a lost cause at the same time she somehow found a plateau and before she realized her whole body started to shake.

Emma didn’t know what was happening she just felt like the density of her body had tripled then there was light around her hands and a ball of energy flew from her hands straight into Ruby’s chest.

There were gasps, Regina actually smiled but from the sideways glance towards the Savior only because she knew Emma couldn’t see her at the moment.

That one, visible and pretty ugly bruise on Ruby’s face faded completely and the cuts on her body disappeared as Emma’s energy was absorbed into her cells but there was no sign of the girl regaining consciousness.

Emma felt drained enough to sneak a peek when she heard voices from the crowd around them that sounded like she could be doing something right.

She was instantly disappointed when she was still met with closed eyes and an unresponsive body. She glanced at Regina expecting to see the usual scowl from her no nonsense, well, practically ex- teacher but the look on brunette’s face confused her.

 “Are you smiling? Why are you smiling? It didn’t work.”

Regina obviously let herself celebrate too long and for a fraction of a second it seemed like she was about to display the textbook deer caught in the headlight look on her face but she found a neutral enough mask to hide behind.

 “Miss. Swan. Would. You. Look. At. Her.”

Emma felt disappointment and familiarity echo in her chest at hearing that specific title but she followed the Mayor’s instruction. She saw what Regina meant immediately.

“You did it.”

She smiled, mostly not because of a half assed healing performance but because clearly there was some chance for this ice wall to be destroyed between them after all.

She remembered very well how Regina said that she cannot think of anything else they could try to help her do this short of seriously injuring someone she has strong enough feelings for and putting enormous pressure on her. Emma knew that look on her face was the ‘I know I was right,’ one and she had to admit as much as she hated to see it once now she loved to witness it.

It suit Regina’s face perfectly.

The trio of Gold, with Belle on his right arm, and Neal step closer to them.

“I’ll take it from here.”

Gold takes a few more steps, performs one of his trademark hand movements.

Everyone expects that Ruby will regain consciousness now that an experienced healer’s magic is doing the job but nothing happens.

That confuses everyone, even Gold.

“I know why it didn’t work when I tried to do it but what about you, Gold? Aren’t you supposed to have black belt in magic or the magical world equal of it or something?” Emma asks half seriously, half teasingly.

Gold obviously didn’t like being clueless but then something clicked into its place inside his head.

“I have good news and bad news,” he used the cliché with obvious joy. “I think I just figured out what is the Shadow’s weakness but you are not going to like how we could use it.”

Regina was the one that broke the humming generated by low murmurs that Gold’s sentence started. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“It used up almost all of her…”

He couldn’t finish the thought because that was the moment David and Mary Margaret chose to barge in with sword and bow in their hands.

They were looking like they were ready for any kind of fight apart from the tiny detail where their baby boy was strapped to his daddy’s chest in a baby carrier.

David, very seriously demanded to know, “Where is the monster?”

Regina had to actually force herself to not to show her sympathy outwards.

Also she is struggling with her impulse to give a lecture to the couple in ‘How To Keep Your Kid Safe 101’. She reins her reaction because she is really, really not supposed to look out for the youngest Charming; no matter how insanely adorable the innocent little mister is or how much he reminds her of baby Henry or who he is named after – even if everyone calls him differently – or that sometimes she feels this ache in her chest when she thinks about how she could be having…

She was shaken out of her reverie by Gold’s mocking voice. “Not here.”

He turned to Regina and continued their conversation as if nothing happened while Mary Margaret and David tried to blend in but they still looked like five minutes ago they were running around the table at home in their kitchen to entertain their son when they got a call from someone here – one of the dwarfs most likely – and just came here without thinking it through at all.

It’s obvious that as much as they love being home this disturbance in the peace was like dessert after diner for both of them.

Emma would be laughing at them if seeing her parents and her little brother like this didn’t hurt her like she guesses being cut into tiny little pieces supposed to – while you are kept alive as long as possible. These cuts were similar the ones she felt herself get every single time she had to call the baby Neal before his ex-Neal came back to life and more or less made her forgive him.

His resurrection solved her name issues too as now everyone was calling her baby brother by the nickname she fabricated from his first and middle names; she kept calling baby boy Neal Daniel Nolan, N.D. which soon morphed into ‘Andy’.

“I couldn’t understand why the Shadow would possess Miss Lucas to attack me but now I think what it said about being invincible rather means that without an existing corporeal form it’s unable to affect our plane without a physical host.”

“That’s a leap,” Regina concluded quickly.

“Really? Why do you think it tried to attack ME with using a werewolf when we know that it could’ve ripped the Shadow from my body and end me like that? If it wanted me dead there aren’t many ways to do it more painfully. I would know. Don’t you think if it…”

“Would it kill you to just get to the part where you tell us why isn’t my granddaughter waking up?” Granny demanded from the ground still next to the unconscious girl, obviously pissed at the man who hurt her.

Belle could see that her husband was seriously contemplating just continuing on with his explanation and leave the woman and many more in suspense about the unconscious Ruby’s fate but one look from her was enough to have him change his mind, even if it’s rather reluctant.

“The reason Miss Lucas is still unconscious is that making her turn into her wolf form outside of the normal cycle required more energy than her body naturally contains on ordinary days. She will be fine once she recharges enough. I can’t help her with that. No one can expect YOU, Eugenia. I trust you remember how.”

Granny nodded and started to concentrate to do just that muttering under her nose the same time as collective sighs of relief could be heard and Gold carried on with sharing his findings about their new/old enemy.

 “If my theory is correct then the Shadow is invincible to anything we could throw at it while it’s in non corporeal form but if it possesses a host...” 

 “You want to sacrifice someone’s life to kill it?”

The crowd was completely silent and some of the spectators were still so very surprised – even after everything that Regina did to redeem herself – that their mouths hung open at hearing the Queen’s objection to taking a life.

Not Emma though or Henry or even Mary Margaret. David has his hanging half open but that’s because he was having a revelation. Apparently he somehow missed the moment when Mary Margaret has genuinely moved on and started to feel and not just say that this time, this time Regina could actually do it and finally find her equilibrium.

Belle decided that it was time for her to intervene and she pulled her husband aside to have a little chat. In the silence everyone could still hear what they were saying and with their hushed voices it’s even more awkward than before.

“Rumple, you promised me there would be no more deaths by your hand.”

“I said unnecessary deaths, Belle,” the Rumplestiltskin part of him tried to be technical but his Gold part tried to amend the edge of that. “I don’t think there is another way…”

“There always is.”

Their conversation got lost in the whispering that started when the number of people at Granny’s grew again with two new arrivals. The second they walked in, most are even more surprised by what they were seeing than they were about witnessing the difference in their once Evil Queen and that was saying something.


	4. When The Fires Have Surrounded You

Tinker Bell and Robin Hood walk in together and since the latter is wearing modern clothes; dress shoes, suit pants and an only halfway buttoned up white shirt instead one of his usual scarf, jeans and plaid combination everyone is immediately jumping to conclusions.

This was most certainly going to be topic of gossip all over town.

Tinker Bell and Robin were preparing for THE DATE. THE DATE that‘s been talked about endlessly. THE DATE people actually started betting on this month.

It was happening.

The woman Robin Hood had been asking out on multiple occasions had finally said ‘yes’.

Regina Mills, ex-Evil Queen and Mayor of Storybrooke, had finally agreed to give another chance to the man.

Most people only knew details about what happened between those two after the latest curse that had been cast upon Storybrooke ended.

Everyone had heard the story of how the first attempt at wooing went though. Robin needed some liquid courage and the serenade he and his merry men performed ended with Regina calling Sheriff Swan to arrest them all for drunk and disorderly. The story reports said Emma tried to solve the problem with encouraging them to just go home and sleep it off and some of them did, but not Robin and Little John. The first wasn’t willing to move from under Regina’s window and the second decided it was a good idea to try and dance with the Sheriff.

She arrested them both. Once they sobered, they were let go with a warning.

The next time that was public knowledge happened when Robin tried to make amends for how disastrous the serenade ended up being. He asked for help from Granny with cooking something the brunette loved to placate the woman. It went very well until Eugenia left him alone for no more than five minutes and during that time he managed to cause a not so small fire that Ruby had to put out with the fire extinguisher before it spread to the whole building.

Regina wasn’t reacting much better when she found out about this but at least she visited him in the hospital where he ended up because of the suspicion of inhaling too much smoke.

That was a good sign and then the other step forward between them happened when he decided to work for Granny to compensate her for the damage his lack of understanding of the modern world caused – since he didn’t have any money – the Mayor kept up her schedule and still dined there pretty often.

The constant meetings, and not lastly a bit cheating and regular usage of Roland’s puppy dog eyes, softened Regina up enough that the woman had given him a real chance. She listed it off as facts that they both are to be at her place and that she would be the one cooking and providing everything they would need. Robin was all too glad to put up any fight and then still showed up with a basket of apples.

It made her smile, especially because Roland was already munching on one by the time father and son arrived to her front door. After the promising start the night went wonderfully. Regina made peanut butter cake and the little boy was especially eager to taste it until he did and he started to turn red and gasp for breaths.

Robin panicked while Regina kept her cool and just acted without thinking. She teleported the boy and his father right to the hospital. When, after one hellish fifteen minutes, Whale told them that the patient was going to be fine and they would just have to be careful that he avoided eating the cause of the allergic reaction. The Thief felt like he could finally breathe and as if their roles were reversed suddenly the Mayor was the one that felt anxiety creeping up on her. She didn’t even care about making a scene in front of the public eye so the whole hospital heard as the woman stated that whatever this was or could be between them was not working and Robin should keep his distance if he knew what was good for him.

No one heard anything more about this affair since but obviously, something did happen since he is doing preparations and Regina was not asking for explanations and neither was she yelling at him or looked like she was hurt because the man was moving to someone else.

She was doing quite the opposite in fact.

The talking and the betting about them didn’t stop during the time the two ‘were on a break but we were never in a relationship to being with’ period. Most of the participants were putting their money on whether the Queen would give in and try again and if she did what would go wrong that time. The couple of optimists that thought they had a chance at making it though an actual, official date –  without the kid –  at some point in time were few and far between.

Many saw the incidents as proof the world was trying to keep them apart. Some even went as far as thinking that it was all happening with a good reason. After all, the person Regina Mills had been in the Enchanted Forest, the woman who killed so many innocent people might have earned some really horrendous karma that still needed years of work to turn back around.

They didn’t know the half of it.

Once everyone remembered what they have forgotten about that year back in the Enchanted Forest after Pan’s curse got redirected, Regina and Robin had found themselves in a strange predicament.  They both wanted to take the next step and see where their ‘friendship starting to turn into something more’ could go and try to be as happy as they could until the faithful moment when Regina got glimpse of the lion tattoo on the inside of Robin’s wrist right after their reunion and run without looking back, without giving any explanation to him about what was wrong.

He actually had to find out the truth from venting about what had happened to Tinker Bell.

When the Fairy told everything to him, he understood Regina’s unexpected reaction very well. He himself fought with his flight response because he wasn’t willing to accept that any kind of pixie dust could rank the depth of his feelings even though he definitely felt a connection; a strong one. Then later he and Tinker Bell had another talk about this and the blonde woman managed to change his whole perspective with two questions. “You were given a second chance; do you want to waste it? Don’t you want to be HAPPY?”

After that there was no more doubt in his mind. He just never thought that it would be this hard and sort of dangerous to actively try to be with the person that he knew he could make happy and be happy with in return.

While most people were busy with starting to discuss about this subject creating a steady hum Regina was still engaged in heavy chest gazing. Even Emma caught herself starting at those very, very nicely shaped muscles that were peaking out from underneath that white fabric on him. He might be really, really not her type but that’s not requirement for her to be able to appreciate the sight of a nicely toned body.

Literally no one even registered the question Robin asked the minute he and his companion arrived so he repeated it, “Is everyone all right?”

Emma was just shaking herself out of her moment of weakness in time to answer him.

“Yeah, everyone is fine,” Robin was looking at the unconscious Ruby, so half a beat later Emma amends, “or will be. Everything is peachy. We have a non corporeal smoke monster that possesses people to use them as assassins against Gold. You know just the usual.”

The Thief didn’t really know how to react to what he was hearing or what to say to that but then he noticed the way Regina was watching him and he couldn’t help the smile automatically formed on his lips thanks to the warmth that flood his heart. Instead of getting embarrassed about getting caught staring, the woman smiled back at him.

Emma’s brain decided that was the perfect moment to come up with an idea. “How about we get rid of that thing without, you know, actually killing it?”

That got both Regina and Gold’s attention.

“What do you have in mind, Sheriff?” Regina inquired with letting just a hint of irritation seep into her voice.

“We could trap it somewhere it couldn’t harm anyone like…”

Regina didn’t even wait for her to finish the sentence before interrupting. “Pandora’s box is not an option, unless you want to risk letting out the army of flying monkeys the fairies imprisoned in there.”

“I was thinking a little further away… like a different world.”

Some murmurs from the crowd suggested that some of the people present immediately jumped to the conclusion that she was talking about opening up a portal on their own again, even knowing what the consequences of that actions were the last time they needed to do it to get rid of the villain that threatened the town.

She turned her head towards where she heard the voices from and stated, “I am not saying WE open a portal on our own. There are multiple ways to do it, safe ways, if we have the time to find the right tools.”

“That’s not half a bad idea, actually,” Gold admitted.

“You told me Zelena destroyed every single magic bean,” Neal added.

“Beans are not the only way,” Emma turned to him. “There are hats that can open up portal between worlds.

“Okay, but you two do remember the Shadow CAN travel between worlds? I have firsthand experience about it.”

“Then we just find a world that no one and nothing can leave,” Gold stated a plan already clearly forming in his head.

“The only problem with that is,” Regina started to point out, “if we had a way to sent it over a portal without it possessing someone which in this case would be completely counterproductive.”

“You don’t worry about that I have just what we need to solve that problem. The bigger issue is that only very few people have the ability to create a working hat and Jefferson is not one of them and as far as I know the curse didn’t bring anyone who can with us. Either one.“

 “Actually I know someone who can get it work.” Mary Margaret said and then kept a bit of a pause for effect. “The last one Jefferson used was made by Emma.”

She was so proud. It felt nice, unlike the general gaping from everyone else apart from her father who seemed to have known this bit of information. Emma most definitely still hated being the center of attention.

“Is that true?” Regina asked, impressed.

“Well, technically… I mean he forced me to put together a hat and I guess it must have worked since, you know, he fell out of the window but managed to pull off a very neat midair disappearing act and then the whole mother-daughter road trip to Fairy Tale Land with ogres all over the place happened.”

“Good,” Gold was smiling now like someone who knew they are with the winning team. You and Regina go to Jefferson to get some of the necessary material he keeps there. It should give us time to find a way to lure this creature into our trap and make preparations so that he cannot escape it.”

Regina glared at him because she knew what he was doing, trying to get her to spend time with Emma, very well aware than in this situation she couldn’t refuse to go with the blonde woman without making it suspicious. Well, he could force her to be in the general vicinity of Emma Swan but he couldn’t force her to talk to her if they didn’t have an audience.

The Savior, lost in her own thoughts, missed the silent interaction and just nodded as she started to walk out. Regina reluctantly followed her but got stopped by Robin.

“Be careful,” was all that he said and knowing the woman the only public display of affection he dared to express was an incredibly short face touch with the back of his fingers.

Regina said, “I promise,” and then moved away to join Emma on the way to the police cruiser that was still parked in front of the building.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Once the car’s engine signaling the Mayor and the Sheriff’s departure was heard Neal noticed that his father was intently watching Henry.

His face turned dark the second he realized what was going on in the man’s head.

“You are lucky Emma and Regina have left by now because if they had caught you thinking what I think you are thinking they would have joined forces to rip your heart out and I would be helping them and you know what? Together we could do it.”

Everyone looked at father and son not understanding where Neal was coming from, except for Gold.

“Come on, Bae. You know it would be the easiest way. I can’t help how my brain works.”

“I don’t care. We are not going to use Henry as bait.”

“Of course not.”

Now their audience understood and everyone seemed to be agreeing with the Deputy on the matter with one significant exception.

“Why not?”

It was Henry’s voice.

“Because it’s dangerous,” Neal stated in a tone that left no place for argument.

Of course, this was Henry and he didn’t let it go that easily.

“Come on, I am not a little boy anymore. I could go there, say the words and the bond between me and Grandpa would make sure I am safe. I could maybe even do some magic.”

The boy was buzzing with energy and it made Neal proud but he was still his little boy and there was no way that he was going to let him do anything like this. It was obvious that his father was not on the same page and could be swayed easily.

“Your mothers would never allow you to risk your life and be the bait and neither would I. We are going to pretend that your grandfather,” he nodded towards the man, “agrees.

“You never let me do anything anymore.”

Henry’s whine was defeated and Neal considered that a victory until the boy asked a very valid question.

“How are you going to lure that thing to the pawnshop without a kid calling it? You are aware if you won’t let me do it you cannot risk anyone else’s child, right?”

There was only silence for moments, every parent in the room agreeing with Henry. The boy started to hope that they won’t have another choice than to let him help.

“I am sorry, Henry. Your father is right. It wants me so I will find a way to be the bait myself. If there is anyone who can, it’s me. Wait for it, my boy. Your time will come. You know that.”

Henry sighed, and gave up while Neal took note of the silent conversation between his son and his father. He didn’t know what to think of it and before he could direct any question about it to them Tinker Bell spoke up.

“We should get all kids in the town to safety. This is Peter Pan’s Shadow we are talking about after all.”

Robin stepped next to the Fairy and addressed everyone, “Does anyone have a suggestion where we should go?”

“The School’s Gym is big enough to gather all of them. The fairies could make sure they are safe there.”

Of course David liked Mary Margaret’s idea which he voices immediately, „It’s a plan. We,” he looked at his wife for one more second and then to different individuals in the crowd, “go and talk to Mother Superior and then head to the school.”

He stepped forward with his boy almost asleep on his chest. Mary Margaret followed them a beat later.

Everyone moved to start the necessary preparations, only Granny stayed unmoving doing exactly what Gold suggested, holding onto Ruby’s hand and transferring her own energy. So far the act was without any visible positive effect. Eugenia knew these things took time but the lack of feedback that what she was doing was indeed helping frustrated her to no end.

Robin didn’t move either. He watched the women on the ground. He was too hoping for a sign that showed them that the method suggested by Rumplestiltskin did work. He wanted to witness and share the moment. Seconds ticked by and the break they were expecting was still not happening when Tinker Bell moved next to him.

He knew it was the fairy without having to look. “Would you go and take Roland to the school? He is with…”

“Little John, I know. We’ll be there as soon as we can,” the Fairy reassured him. They locked eyes for a second and that was the exact moment when Ruby moved.

Robin and Tink both turned back to the Lucas women when they heard Granny saying, “Oh, thank God,” to see that Ruby was holding her grandmother’s hand now. They smiled at them and then at each other.

“Go, I’ll help them,” Robin reassured Tinker Bell who then left with warmth filling her heart. The Thief watched her go then walked right next to women on the ground and crouched down.

“We should take her to some place more comfortable. May I?” He gestured towards Ruby’s body clear with his intention.

Granny only hesitated for a second before saying, “Yes”.

Robin picked the waitress up like she was weighing nothing without hesitation but his shirt was suddenly almost too tight on him at certain places.

Eugenia never let go of her granddaughter’s hand.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Emma and Regina were enveloped in awkward silence on the road towards Jefferson’s manor.

Regina was perfectly comfortable with it, or at least was trying to convince herself about that, but Emma couldn’t stand it for more than a few minutes, not when she knew this was her chance to finally get them past this mess.

“Please, talk to me.”

There was no answer coming.

“You talked to me like five minutes ago.”

She was ignored.

“I am sorry,” Emma said with a heavy sigh. “Here is the thing, I know I shouldn’t have said those things to you but don’t you think that keeping a grudge because of it for more than two months was punishment enough? I thought that after everything you were getting better with that…”

She knew she was balancing on a fine line but she couldn’t stop. No. She wouldn’t stop. This rift between them had to end, now.

“I was drunk. I didn’t know what I was saying. Actually I am kind of fuzzy on some of the details but...”

Regina interrupted the Sheriff’s rambling, “I am not going to talk about that and at this second I don’t have anything more to say to you and I’d prefer if you only addressed me when it was absolutely necessary.”

It sounded final and to stress it some more the Mayor started admiring the Storybrooke scenery with such intensity one would think that she was seeing it for the first time. She actually pulled off pretending, turning it into a clear message because, well, she herself dreamt the whole thing up from scratch and had the chance to see it from every single angle in the last thirty years.

“Okay,” Emma’s tone made it clear that it was anything but ‘okay’. She was sure that as stubborn as Regina was if she can get her to start a real conversation between them, like the ones they were having before any of this, then it could equal peace between them by the end of this current crisis. She couldn’t just give up on this opportunity. It’s been too long already.

“Will you at least accept my apology?”

Regina didn’t react.

“Look, I miss you. I miss our lessons. I think you do too, even if you can’t admit it to yourself. I know I screwed up but I gave you time and space, and I don’t know; could we just forget that day ever happened?”

There was no reaction.

Emma felt more and more awkward with the one-sided conversation but she knew she would not stop now. “I even miss you calling me incompetent fool, or just Swan when I really pissed you off with being one incompetent fool even though it still hurts when you call me that.”

Silence.

The Sheriff contemplated bringing up the binding and how Gold and the Mayor fooled her as a sort of bargaining chip but she quickly decided against it, thinking that it wouldn’t further her goal, if anything it would probably just give Regina a reason to shut her off even more and ammunition to do so, after all their placebo trick did do exactly what Emma wanted.

She knew she had to bring up a topic that her companion wouldn’t be able to not comment on. If it happened to be a bit annoying it was all the better because Regina and patience were not on friendly terms. It was risky but, well, between them, antagonizing each other always seemed to work and Emma wasn’t the type of person who thought things all the way trough.

If she were they wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.

“I have spent the last few weeks trying to come up with scenarios where everything that could would go to hell just to not die of boredom. There were returning big bads from the past; ogres, dragons even those flying monkeys…”

Regina’s mouth twitched but she kept it under control. Emma was sure she was about to hear a snide remark about how this was all her fault then.

Regina hold onto her silence and so Emma decided to stir them towards a bit more dangerous topic.

 “You’d like my conclusion about why I keep losing everyone who shows any interest towards me.” A beat passed. “I am cursed.”

Now that got Regina’s attention and she turned towards the blonde sitting at the steering wheel.

“That’s why I am alone. That’s why they keep dying. They feel something for me and I feel something for them and it just kills them because of what I am.”

Regina just couldn’t keep her answer bottled up to that one.

“That is quite possibly the stupidest thing that I have ever heard leaving your mouth and that is saying something.”

Emma wanted to smile in triumph because this was finally a promising development but she couldn’t because no, she didn’t think that she was just making this up, quite the opposite in fact. It was still a struggle for Regina to engage in a conversation, especially considering the topic the Savior decided to use to try to make peace with her but she did it anyway.

“You don’t seriously think that to be true?”

“Honestly?”

“I’d prefer that.”

“Then, the answer is yes.” Emma sighed. “I mean what other explanation is there?”

 “I’d know if you are cursed, Emma. You are not.”

“Then why did every single person I showed any interest in since I came to Storybrooke had violent death? And please don’t say it’s just bad luck.”

Regina stayed silent, the assumption that she would ever give such a cliché answer was offending enough and Emma could see that so she tried to move the conversation along quickly and she said something that she didn’t really think through.

“Who has that kind of ‘luck’ with love?”

Regina sighed because the answer to the question was her name, and Emma knew this, maybe better than most.

“You know very well who. Daniel is dead because I loved him. My father is dead because I loved him. My mother is dead because I loved her. I did kill both my parents with my own two hands. I ripped my father’s heart out, I returned my mother’s and still the end result turned out to be the same. Do you think I am cursed too?”

“Isn’t that why you don’t use your magic anymore only when there is no other way left? Because magic always comes with a price? What do you think is the price for the magic I have with being the product of truest true love and all?”

“Emma, magic is a gift. You know that. It’s not a curse. I am paying for my sins for making the wrong choices and believing the wrong people. As far as I know it is still ahead of you to make any of those mistakes.”

“If you wanted to make me feel better you failed,” Emma muttered trying to end this much too heavy conversation as soon as possible.

“Who said anything about trying to make you feel better?” Regina smirked letting her back out from this topic because they both knew they couldn’t be sure about this because there was simply no way of knowing if their magic had anything to do with how their lives turned out to be.

“Now that IS the Reg…” Emma trailed down midsentence.

“What?”

“We are here,” the Sheriff explained and then stopped the car in front of the house. They got out and walked to the door at the same time.

Emma was the one knocking but there was no answer coming. There was no sound apart from the noise they caused and the forest around them emitted. A couple seconds passed quickly but when they amounted into a minute it became obvious that no one was going to open the door for them no matter how many times the Sheriff deemed it appropriate to knock on the door.

“Where do you think they are?”

“I don’t know but we don’t have time for this.” Regina gestured towards the door. “Could you?”

Emma smiled at her encouragingly and smugly at the same time then managed to produce the set of tools one needs to open a door if they didn’t have the keys and starts to work on the lock.

“Look at you, Madam Mayor encouraging breaking and entering. I must be rubbing off on you.”

The current burglar smiled and Regina just rolled her eyes but only in her head because she suddenly found this more criminal side of Emma fascinating. She had never seen a lock picked aside from occasionally encountering it on television but those always seemed so fake.

“It all about the tumblers”, Emma said feeling Regina’s gaze at the nape of her neck. She smiled knowingly even before the door opened that she had succeeded and then gestured for the other woman to go ahead. She did and the Sheriff caught up to her in a few strides and proceeded to start talking at a pace that suggested she was trying to make up for lost time.

“I know you could have opened that much faster. I’ve seen you do it. I remember when I tried. I didn’t know buying a new door cost that much if you failed at just conjuring another one out of thin air. Anyways opening doors with a hand movement would have been such a useful trick so many times in my life you wouldn’t believe it, before Storybrooke and in Storybrooke… Actually I could’ve used it the last time I was in this house though I managed pretty well without it. I got out of the ropes Jefferson used to restrain me with breaking the teacup that he used to drug me. It was pretty a-w-e-s-o-m-e…”

And that’s when Emma missed Regina turning left and kept walking two and a half strides before turning and catching up. She was surprised enough that she finally stopped with the word vomit.

“You just said you’d been in this house before,” Regina added when she saw the blonde next to her again.

“Only one of us has extended knowledge about every single building in town because she created them all. I’ve been here, once about three years ago. Excuse me for not remembering where the freaking sewing room is especially because, if you listened, I was drugged at the time.”

“I’d think that wouldn’t stop you.”

Emma already had a retort on her tongue but they reached their destination and seeing the same room that was stocked with a multitude of hats and all kinds of materials turned into a library was enough to change the directions of her thoughts.

“Do you think he actually got rid of it all?”

“I don’t think so. Maybe some. For show. I am guessing he just doesn’t have it on display anymore because of his daughter. I think I know where he stores what’s left.”

“Lead the way.”

And she did.

Regina was right. They found Jefferson’s stash right away. It was in the attic. He had much less of the textiles and the pins and the scissors and so on than when the curse was intact and he was completely obsessed with it but it was still more than enough to create several hats.

“Go ahead, Emma.”

The blonde hesitated only a second before walking right up to the table and starting to gather the things she used the first time around. She sit down then hesitated and fervently wished that she wasn’t here and she didn’t have to do any of this and she started to make the hat.

Regina just watched her work with interest contemplating the possibilities of what makes the Savior capable to do this particular type of magic.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Neal, Belle, Gold and Henry arrived to the Pawnshop. They obviously weren’t chatting during those few minutes it took them on foot to get there from the Diner – Neal especially seemed to be lost in his own head – and the second the bell chimes above the door and it closed behind them the Deputy turned to his father.

“There is something you are hiding from me, you and Henry, and we are not doing anything until you tell me.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Bae,” Gold said with a perfect poker face and while Henry mimicked his posture and facial expression – as family members often do – but while the older man’s poker face was a masterpiece, well, Henry was rather transparent and in the background Belle’s expression was quite revealing too. It made it quite obvious that the trio had a secret.

“I know you better than that, Papa. Out with it,” Neal demanded.

“You should just tell him,” Belle told her husband but she was met with incredulity because she just confirmed his boy’s suspicions.

“This is completely unnecessary and irrelevant information that you don’t need, now. We talk about this later,” Gold tried to back out of having to talk about whatever this was.

“The hell we will. You tell me what is going on right this instant or…”

Henry interjected, “Grandpa was teaching a trick to me right before the Shadow first appeared.”

“And by trick you mean magic, don’t you?” Neal said disappointment evident in his eyes that are boring into his son’s. “Why didn’t you come to us if you’ve changed your mind Henry, why go behind our backs?”

“I am sorry.”

He knew currently he couldn’t get a more satisfying answer from his boy, he turned to Belle. “And you knew about this?”

Belle was ashamed but Gold was not, at all, while Henry was exhibiting all typical signs of feeling guilt.

“This whole binding his magic idea was ridiculous to begin with. It’s in his blood. It’s his heritage. He has great potential. You know that. His mothers know that. It would be such a shame to let it all go to waste just because of fear.”

“Neal, he should learn to control it. It could save his or other’s life,” Belle tried to soften the transgression she helped accomplish.

“And he will, later when being a teen won’t make it that much harder. You know, I expected this from my father but not from you.” He turned back to the older man. “You used some kind of mirage didn’t you to hide this from everyone at the diner and you did this in plain sight? I could…”

A guttural noise left the man’s mouth in his frustration.

“We, HIS PARENTS came to a decision that Henry will wear the bracelet to protect him, to make sure that there will be no more accidents like the ones that happened after the body switch. We agreed, he included, that he will learn from his mother only and just the theoretically stuff until he turns seventeen.”

“Son, listen, Emma hadn’t had the opportunity to learn to control her abilities when she was young and look at her. She is struggling even with simplest tasks.”

“We don’t know if there is a connection there but we do know that Regina has complete control and she didn’t have magic when she was young either.”

“And which one of them do you think Henry will take after? He was worried and he came to me for help. That’s all I did, help.”

“Of course. How long has this been going on?”

“Long enough for me to know that…”

“Enough.” There was no more staggering in Belle’s voice. “Both of you. This is no time to fight about this.”

They did stop and looked at her.

“I know you are disappointed and angry, Neal. And I know that you want to be closer to Henry, Rumple and that you think being the grandfather who lets him do what he wants will do that. I understand both of you and you will definitely have to talk about this until you can find a common ground but LATER. Not now. Not when everyone in the town, the very boy you argue about, could be in grave danger.”

“You are right,” came the answer from her husband while Neal was only willing to go as far as uttering a begrudging, “Fine.”

Obviously this was a ‘To be Continued’ moment between father and son but for the moment they put this issue aside and moved into the back of the shop.

Gold headed straight behind the counter and walked right up to the safe he has there. He removed only one specific item.

It’s the medallion he once used to summon a wraith.

“What’s that?” Henry tried to break the awkward atmosphere with concentrating on anything but the heated conversation he just witnessed.

“Something that can deal with non corporeal entities,” was all his grandfather said as an answer.

__________________________________________________________________________________

“That’s it?” Regina asked as Emma put down a completed hat on the top of the table followed by the scissor she was using for the finishing touch.

“I guess so.”

“You don’t sound very convincing.”

“That’s because I don’t have the slightest idea about what I did the first time that made it work but hey, no biggie.”

“Well, we should test it anyway.”

“Is that safe? I remember very vividly what happened the last time.”

 “Let’s go outside to the balcony.”

“Why?”

“To be safe.”

“Oh, okay."

They stood outside. It was sunny and the view was beautiful with the forest all around them. Emma got caught up in it when she felt Regina shove the hat into her hand.

“What are you doing?”

“I am not doing magic, you are.”

“Gold knows how to start this thing so I don’t have to. Problem solved. We can go.”

Emma pushed the hat back into Regina’s hand and actually started to turn and march back in but Regina grabbed her shoulder and turned her back around with ease.

“Yes, I am aware, very much so, but from what we know the Shadow is after him. He might be a little preoccupied when the time comes and you knowing how to do this could be just the advantage we’ll need to succeed.”

“Fine,” Emma looked like as she always did when she was insecure about a magic lesson but she was incapable of stopping herself from whispering, “You did miss doing this.”

Regina feigned irritation and Emma let her without commenting on it because this was the normal for the two of them.

“What do I do?”

“You need to find a regret; a strong memory of you wishing that a certain thing in your life was different.”

“You mean like wanting to be in a world where I never give up Henry?”

Emma still-doesn’t-always-think-through-what-she-says-before-she-speaks Swan strikes again and the sentence ends up transforming into a pretty strong punch to Regina’s gut as well as a slap to her own face.

Regina recovers quicker. “It works better if it something you still felt strongly about. Is that true? Do you still frequently wish that?”

That was a loaded question and they both knew it.

Emma didn’t need much time to have an answer, actually she had it the second her brain processed what she impulsively said. She couldn’t ignore that in the end their son turned out to be one fine young man because he was both of theirs. She knew she couldn’t wish that away with all her heart. Not anymore and most definitely not since she had to realize that without Regina’s influence her boy, her real son didn’t exist, that Henry Swan was just a skewed fragment of him, nothing more. He was hers alone but not the son she came to love.

“Think,” Regina urged. “There must be something else.”

Emma started to rake her brain for something, anything that could be a strong enough emotion and after a couple of seconds she found inspiration.

“I chose something.”

“Well, then get to it.”

Emma stepped to the railing, thought of a world where her present was only different on one certain point and concentrated, and even if it was not even true at the moment, it made her magic buzz. Regina could feel that the air around them started to fill with Emma’s raw magic, her own answering the Sheriff’s energy with bouncing around just under her skin like a wild horse wanting nothing more than to get out of its corral and run wild. She knew she had to give it a reprieve and knew exactly how to do that without using it herself. She touched Emma’s shoulder literally giving a hand to the Sheriff to do what she was trying to accomplish.

She squeezed to signal when it was time to let the hat go.

Emma dropped it to the ground a story below them but didn’t dare to look down after it, only when Regina squeezed her hand again. The Sheriff couldn’t stop the ‘wow’ leaving her mouth when saw that the portal had opened, on her first try no less.

“I know you were helping. Doesn’t that count as breaking your magic celibate?”

“I was just functioning as a little bit of extra fuel, you were the one who did the driving. I actually used to do this multiple times during our lessons. It’s easier to contain my magic if it doesn’t pile up uncomfortably.”

Emma couldn’t help the smile gracing her lips but her eyes shone with guilt because the absence of this relief must have made resisting the urge to use magic even harder for Regina in the last two months. The woman was still holding onto her when the object of her thoughts stiffened next to her, and her expression darkened. She looked away from Emma and followed the other woman’s line of sight.

It became clear immediately what brought that look on; black smoke was coming towards them above the forest, fast.

They instinctually checked the vortex, moving in synchronization but it was still formed and showed no signs of slowing down.

“Oh, crap,” was Emma assessment about their situation.

“Indeed.”

“How long until we’ll have the hat back?”

“Too long,” Regina stated seeing how fast their unexpected visitor was approaching.

Regina sighed letting her frustration show for only a couple of seconds before she started to make quick circles with her fingers in the portal’s direction. The movement speed the process up so that in a couple of seconds the vortex was gone and only the hat was left in its wake.

She knew that this could easily escalade into a situation that required her using her powers but she couldn’t help feeling disappointed when she was doing so good with restraining herself.

With her hand still on Emma’s shoulder she puffed them down to the ground, grabbed the hat and then run towards Emma’s car leaving the blonde confused enough that she didn’t even questioned it when the brunette opened the door on the driver’s side and got into the driver seat. She just simply changed course and sit next to her putting the hat that Regina threw on the seat into her lap.

The Shadow was about thirty feet away from the vehicle when Regina turned the keys Emma had left in the ignition. The vehicle started to glide faster than she expected.

“I am probably asking something stupid, I know, but why didn’t we puff the hell away from here?”

“We are letting it chase us.”

“Okay.” A short pause and a confused, “why?” followed from the Sheriff.

“We don’t know if Gold managed to come up with something to lure this thing into our trap. We can’t afford to pass up this opportunity.”

“What if they aren’t ready?”

“Use your phone and tell them they have about twenty minutes before we arrive. Make it fifteen,” Regina corrected when she still had to accelerate to keep the Shadow away from reaching the car.

“Okay,” Emma muttered, clearly not handling crazy driving better than Neal did if she was not the one at the steering wheel – though Regina was driving even more recklessly that she did this morning and that was saying something.

She put the hat between her legs and clamped her thighs around it to keep it steady then dig out her phone from her jeans and dialed her Deputy all the while trying to not become one with the material of the car thanks to inertia and all the sharp turns on the road.

“Neal, we know” one change of course, “where the Shadow is”, and another, “it’s following us right now. Regina and I are,” and one more sharp turn, “lllllluuuuuring it to the pawnshop. Will be there in about fifteen minutes.”

“Tell him that it’s going to be a close one and that I am sending the hat to his father. He should be ready to open a portal by the time we get there.”

“Did you hear that?”

_“Yeah. He figured out which world to send it to and we have a means to deal with it but Emma, there is something you need to know. Henry is still here with us.”_

“What?” Emma practically screamed.

“What is he saying?” Regina demanded to know hearing Emma’s reaction.

“I am going to put you on speaker,” Emma informed Neal and the man’s voice immediately fills the car.

_“We had no idea this would be happening this quickly and Henry and I had some things to talk about which I am going to tell you two all about, later, but right now we should figure out how to get him to the gym. I know the Fairies are there but I am not exactly comfortable with only them protecting him if something happens to my father or us.”_

“Neal, listen to me,” Regina said while still focusing on the road. “Tell your father to wait for us on the outside. You take Henry to the back door. The second this car stops I am going to teleport there and take him to the school in the meanwhile your father can deal with this thing.”

_“Sounds like a plan. Be careful, both of you.”_

“You too,” Emma answered then ends the call.

Regina did her thing the hat disappears from its former place and that couple of seconds of distraction is enough that they are suddenly headed straight for a tree with the Shadow right on their tail.

__________________________________________________________________________________

A second later the black object appeared on the counter at the Pawnshop actually sliding right into a mirror and breaking it with its residual momentum. The noise of the shards falling to the ground stopped an intense argument between Gold and Belle.

“Why did that happen?” the Librarian inquired completely ignoring the conversation they’d been having much to Rumple’s dismay.

Gold looked pained and more like he’d rather be tortured than to have to answer that question. He tried to ignore it and continue their previous back and forth.

“You have to go with Henry. You can’t stay here, Belle. It’s too dangerous.”

“I don’t have to do anything. You might be my husband but you don’t get to order me around and don’t think...”

“I am not ordering, Belle I am pleading and I am begging. Please. Please, leave with grandson and Regina.”

“I am staying with you and Neal to help.”

“And how are you planning to ‘help’?” Gold’s tone was cold, mocking but usually he was a much better actor when it came to manipulating someone. Belle knew him better than to fall for it or take offence, at least, at this very moment.

“Don’t think I forgot about what just happened with that hat. It was coming from the car Emma and Regina are in and that’s why it arrived the way it did. You will have to help them too, aren’t you? They won’t be able to just teleport out of a moving car.”

 “Please, son, convince her. I can’t have you both…”

“Belle is right.”

Gold felt obviously betrayed, his facial expression screaming ‘Et tu, Brute?’ as he was looking at his son who kept listing reasons that slowly but surely started to break down his resistance.

“You will not only have to trap our enemy somehow, make sure Henry is protected in the meanwhile, but you will also have to summon a wraith, open up the portal AND, apparently, help Emma and Regina to get out of that car in one piece.”

The Pawnshop Owner obviously could see the point Neal was making but he was way too stubborn to let himself be swayed that easily. But his son knew exactly how to affect his father’s emotions the most effectively.

“I know you are powerful but this could be too much even for you.”

Gold scoffed at his boy openly but he was dreading what he will say next because he could feel it coming.

“We don’t want to lose you again just as much as you don’t want to lose us. You know we are right. It would be easier if you had help from the both of us. More chance for success.”

“You don’t have to feel guilty for doing this. All of us will be fine. Everything will be fine. We’ll do this, together as a family and we will be victorious,” Belle pleaded.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Gold asked with defeat in his voice.

“You know why,” Neal stated.

“Fine, but we are doing this my way.”

They both nodded after looking into each other’s eyes for a short moment obviously glad that they will have the opportunity to affect the outcome of this fight.

__________________________________________________________________________________

They didn’t crash into the tree on the side of the road but Emma was now actually sweating and there might be thoughts close to prayers in her head. They skidded and it made things even worse but Regina corrected their course, again.

“Not that I am complaining but who gave you a driver’s license?”

“My curse,” Regina said while keeping her attention on the road completely as they finally get out of the woods and reach the town itself. “Are you asking as the Sheriff or my friend?”

“Nevermind. I should’ve seen that coming,” was all Emma muttered when they were finally past the serpentine and arrived into town.

 “I’ve been driving for as long as you’ve been alive; I know what I am doing.”

“I didn’t say anything… bad.”

“But you were thinking it.”

“Okay, it’s time for a topic change. We are almost there. How do you want to do this? Because that thing is exactly as close to us as it was back at Jefferson’s place.”

“I am not sure. We’ll have to wait to see what Rumplestiltskin has come up with. Worst case scenario we will have to teleport from the moving car.”

“Why do I have a feeling that that’s not a good idea?”

“Because every once in a while even your instincts can work the way they are supposed to.”

“Stupid instincts should’ve chosen a different time.”

Regina smirked but it soon morphed into a serious expression. Her stomach was in knots and she couldn’t decide that it was because of the present of because she was feeling things that were about to happen.

__________________________________________________________________________________

**A FEW MINUTES LATER**

Neal and Belle were standing exactly on the middle of the pavement when the police cruiser showed up on the road ahead of them. There was a road block in place on both sides of the street making sure that the only way the car can go was between the vehicles. It was also where the Librarian and the Deputy were standing next to each other, feet planted, obviously not planning to move away.

“What the hell are they doing?” Emma asked confused.

“I have no idea,” Regina said but wasn’t that nonplussed about it.

“Why aren’t you slowing?”

“Because there is a shadow after us that can possess people, meaning either one of us if it gets close enough?”

Regina stated mimicking Emma Swan’s usual style then added in her own.

“We have to trust that this is part of their plan.”

“Oh. I don’t know if I am hoping it is or not ‘cause it seems like a pretty dumb plan from where I am sitting.”

Regina didn’t slow down one bit and they were getting dangerously close to impact but neither Neal nor Belle moved an inch. They were just staring at the car that was coming closer and closer to them.

Emma’s heart feels like it was going to punch its way out of her chest when their vehicle got very close to the point of no return.

“Regina…” Emma’s voice was warning but that was the exact moment when Neal very, very subtly nodded and instead of grabbing the steering wheel and changing their course as she obviously planned to do, Emma let go and closed her eyes.

She prepared herself for feeling impacts but they never came.

Her closed eyelids made her miss as the cruiser went straight through what must have been an illusion of Neal and Belle the entire time, only the shadow was stopped by them. There was a wall of energy around the line of the road block and the creature couldn’t seem to get around it to get to them but it was unable to back out of it too.

“What happened?” Emma asked now feeling stupid for closing her eyes. “What the hell was that?”

Before answering, Regina stepped on the break now that finally they had a little bit of advantage but the car didn’t react.

“Don’t tell me that it’s not working, please.”

“Sorry about this, Emma.”

Regina did the only thing that was left to do; she grabbed her passengers’ shoulder and teleported them out of the still speeding police cruiser. Their momentum stayed and in result the usual purple smoke that accompanied this type of transporting moved much more quickly and violently, promising a violent landing once they rematerialized.

It happened behind the Pawnshop.

The Mayor and the Sheriff regained their original form right up in the air and were flying straight into a brick wall. Regina knew she had to do something but it was not like she has ever had the need or means to practice something like this before. She was far too disoriented to even try to save them let alone be successful.

There was a loud crash and fireworks and smoke. They came from the cruiser that was left moving on without a driver and ended up colliding into another car in a spectacularly damaging way to both parties.

Finally, right before crushing into that brick wall that would probably end with multiple broken bones in the luckiest scenario, they stopped moving altogether.

Gold was the one who caught them both with telekinesis.

He intensely concentrated while putting them down on the ground without harm.

The women landed not exactly gracefully even with help. When they tried to get up from the heap on the ground it was not more graceful either. Both of them were swaying from vertigo but they managed to stand up by leaning on each other and the wall behind them that wouldn’t have been a positive fixture in their day had Gold not saved them in the last possible second.

“Sorry about this but I needed the shadow to think you are not a threat anymore so that it would concentrate on getting to Belle and Bae instead of trying to get out of the bubble I put it in.”

Henry run to his mothers while their current savior stayed behind obviously nervous as he kept watching a small white sphere in his hand that was crackling with energy and seemed to be getting darker by the second.

“Thank you,” Emma and Regina both said to their son as he helped them upright. The second that happened he hugged them both.

“We don’t have time for this,” Gold interjected with a surprisingly stern voice leaning on his cane a little bit more than usually. Regina realized why the second she notices the device in his hand. She could see the red. She knew what that meant. For a second the thoughts running through her head could be clearly seen on her face but she quickly forced her features into a long ago perfected mask.

“Unfortunately, I have to agree with him,” Regina stated in a tone that didn’t give anything away about her knowledge.

“Regina, you should take Henry, now,” Gold feigned calmness too but the look he gave Regina showed he knew very well that he had been made by his former student. They were both good but of course the boy’s sixth sense about feeling trouble worked just as fine as always.

“Is Emma staying?” he asked not really knowing what to make of this bad feeling.

“Just as a percussion. Don’t worry, Henry, everything will be okay now,” he tried to reassure his grandson but Henry was not completely convinced. Regina struggled because she knew she couldn’t say anything compromising without putting her son in danger too so, even if it killed her, she stayed quiet and made sure the boy didn’t have time to put together the pieces and figure out what was really going on before they left.

“Stay in one piece,” was all she said to Emma before she and Henry disappeared in a purple swirl of magic. Gold understood very well that the Queen meant that as a warning for him should anything happen to the Savior on his watch.

“They are gone now so you can tell me what the hell is really going on?” Emma calmly asked as soon as it was only the two of them.

Gold was almost surprised witnessing that the usually slower Sheriff put together the pieces without any outside help.

“I couldn’t let Bae and Belle to really risk their lives. I thought I could do all of this alone.”

“Let me guess, you were wrong. What did you do with them?”

“They are outside.”

“You mean they really are in that ‘bubble’?”

“Yes. I was absolutely positive that I could protect them. So certain I put my life on it.”

Seeing Emma’s confused look he elaborates.

“I am keeping them safe with using this device” he shows her the sphere in his hand, “that needs to be powered by one’s magic. I never thought I wouldn’t have enough life force to do everything I am supposed to, to finish this.”

 “Oh,” Emma breathed deeply then gulped while she processed what she heard. Now she could see the rose inside the object God was showing to her. The beautiful, tiny flower was losing its petals rapidly. Knowing that time was not on their side she switched her doer mode on. “What is everything?”

“I need to summon a wraith. It naturally has the ability to deal with the Shadow’s non corporeal form, but if I do that I won’t have enough energy to open up the portal too to send them both away. Not if I want my son and my wife to live through today.”

“Okay,” Emma said in a tone meaning she understood very well that that could only happen if Gold himself was already dead.

“Okay?” the man with the cane was kind of incredulous because Emma and magic didn’t have the best track record when mixed but right now she seemed awfully confident about this.

“Don’t be so surprised. Apparently I can control my magic better than I thought considering that I kept it at bay without even trying since you and Regina did the whole fake binding thing.”

“So you know.”

“Yes, I do. And Yes, I CAN open a portal. Actually, Regina teaching me how attracted Smokey there and started this whole mess.”

“All hail the Queen,” Gold said and more or less meant it.

“How long do we have?

“Not much. Whatever happened to the Shadow it became incredibly strong. I haven’t seen anything quite like it.”

“Well, then let’s go.”

They speed walked/limped into the shop and Gold went right to the picture where his safe was. Emma followed him and watched a bit surprised as the man put the sphere he has been holding into his neck. She never realized it was attached to a necklace.

Maybe before it wasn’t.

She didn’t have much time to ponder about it after Gold opened his usual hiding place using blood magic and then pushed the hat straight into her hand.

“I already gave it the coordinates, so to speak, you will only need to give it enough magic. Are you certain that you can do that?” he asked as he took the Dark One dagger out too and a medal from his coat pocket Emma recognized immediately from the motive on it.

“I think so. I mean Regina helped but I think I can do it alone now.”

“Well, I guess I have to settle for that…”

Once they were outside they were greeted with strong wind. The Shadow’s fight with the barrier to get to its intended victims was so elemental it was affecting the weather. The barricade of cars moved to be parallel with the buildings around them.

Seeing it Emma understood crystal clearly why her help was needed.

Also the creature visibly doubled its efforts of trying to get free when it recognized that it was wrong to think that the accident of the police cruiser earlier took out two of its most dangerous enemies. Now it was moving all around and even though the power of shield its surrounded by was still repelling it every single attempt was like an actual physical blow to Gold.

Neal and Belle look relieved seeing the two of them come out onto the street but they were also very worried. It was not without base since Gold was getting weaker and weaker by the second. He only spared them a glance before he straightened up as much as he was able to and began the summoning ritual.

The Sheriff kept walking as Gold raised his dagger and uttered something she couldn’t really understand.

She soon reached Neal and Belle.

“I’ll take care of this, now. It’s going to be all right,” she tried to reassure them.

Neal nodded while Belle cried into his shoulder. They both looked like they knew very well what it is costing Gold to keep them safe.

Emma walked further and soon reaches ‘smokey’ who was actually red now. She would find that detail amusing if in a couple of minutes she wouldn’t have to do something she only did once before with help from Regina.

She was almost at the beginning of the force field that was keeping the Shadow prisoner when it reached her ears. She heard that sound before, once, at the Sheriff’s station a couple of years before. Then it meant a bad thing. Now she was hoping with everything she had that this time wouldn’t be the same.

She started to count “One, two, three,” to give a little freeway to her panic then shoved it away and turned around. The wraith was heading straight towards her but that was not what caught her attention.

It was Gold’s unmoving form, lying on the ground. She wasn’t expecting THAT to happen and it’s not like they had talked about how this worked.

She was suddenly not so sure who the soul sucker’s target was.

“Shit,” was all she managed to utter before the shield Gold kept up around the Shadow started to crumble and then vanished without a trace. Now, not only the Wraith but the Shadow was moving towards her, fast.

In a few seconds she would be either possessed or about to lose her soul. Great prospects considering the only thing she could think of as a way out was using the hat but that would mean she would be traveling too. She’d rather never repeat that performance, especially not in a world where Gold would want to exile his father with a clearly one way ticket.

She didn’t have enough time to do the heroic sacrifice that came to the forefront of her mind, and she knew it, so instead she closed her eyes and ducked. That’s when she heared that shrill noise again as the dead creature flied over her and went straight for their enemy right before it could reach her.

This time the Shadow was certainly not unaffected by the attack. The Wraith swept it back with its momentum then opened its long fingers and started to twirl the smoke body of the Shadow around them. It was fascinating to Emma to see the mixture of colors and her brain didn’t even register what the voices from behind her were saying. Not until she heard all of them shout.

“Emma, now! Start the hat, now!”

Her brain slowly restarted and registered that the great Dark One must still have some juice left in him since in their struggle the Shadow and the Wraith still bounced off the shield around Belle and Neal so she wasn’t surprised that she could hear a weaker than normal sounding Gold in that canon too that was urging her to act.

She forced herself to concentrate with the hat still in her hands. She imagined being back on the balcony and she ignored how the Wraith has practically consumed their enemy barely ten feet away from her. She remembered what she felt only about half an hour ago, what she thought instead of that stupid thing that she first came to think of and then she threw the hat right next to the Wraith.

It started to spin, again, on the first try.

The wind became even more powerful. By then the Wraith was the only monster on the street but as the portal opens up it was already looking around for a threat or a new victim, Emma couldn’t be sure. It was successful when its dead eyes found the Savior.

The speed it came towards her left her with little chance to run but right before impact she felt Gold’s magic in effect and instead of an impact the creature flew right through her body just like the cruiser went through Belle and Neal.

It pivoted quickly but its second try ended with it getting sucked into the purple vortex that closed right after that.

She heard Neal behind her saying, “You did it.”

The man is wearing the same expression as she was and even Gold was almost smiling as he limped there, heavily leaning on Belle.

“This was easy,” Gold noted.

“You call that easy?” Belle half asked half stated with a tone that felt like she just stabbed her toe on a piece of furniture and now is complaining about it.

He winced knowing that cheating her out of helping will have consequences and also the physical pain he felt wasn’t helping.

“Well, I was expecting something to go horrible wrong,” he mumbled.

“Bad habit?” Neal tried to lighten the mood a bit even though he was clearly angry with his father too.

“No. Just my Storybrooke experience.”

Emma jogged to them. “Is everyone okay?” she asked worriedly when they were all standing next to each other.

She had the hat in her hand.

“I think so,” Neal confirmed now that everyone was back on their feet. “You?”

“Never better. Bad guys defeated, good guys alive and mostly well. I think I am going to go and visit the gym to tell everyone the good news. I want to see Regina and Henry.”

“Okay,” Neal acknowledged the statement.

“But first I need a car. The cruiser is dead. It would be nice if I could use the bug. Only there is no way I am going to try to conjure it. Hey, Gold, could you do it for me?”

“I couldn’t teleport your car if I tried but your apartment is like 10 minutes here on foot.”

“That’s right,” she said with a ‘how silly of me tone’. “Sorry.”

She turned her back on them but after only two steps she turned around and lift the hat to bring their attention to it.

“I guess I am not going to be needing this.”

She lift it up and then threw it to trio’s feet.

To all their surprise it started to spin.

“What the hell are you doing, Emma?” Neal asked as he was already being pulled into the portal while his father tried to stop the process. Gold failed miserably, which was no surprise, considering that he was only on his feet because he had Belle as crutches.

“Isn’t that obvious? I am getting rid of you.”

“Pan?” Neal asked with eyes wide as saucers as he grabbed his father too, to help. Belle stumbled just then and they were steadily getting closer and closer to the swirling vortex in the ground.

“Not even close,” possessed-Emma states with a sinister smile on her face as she used her magic to help the process along. Gold, Belle and Neal were swallowed up by the swirling purple blue energy a few seconds later.

“Now where was I? Oh, yes. Going to the gym to kill a boy and get revenge.”

She teleported away effortlessly, as if there was a need for more proof that she was not the real Emma Swan.


	5. Give My Gun Away When It's Loaded

On the street outside of Storybrooke Elementary there was a piece of paper floating away in the charged air towards the same direction the foliage was bending. It ricocheted off from the protective shield that now existed around the building.

The amount of energy that was being used in the Pawnshop’s direction was rippling throughout the town and was reverberating on the powerful sphere protecting the school making it look like it was out of water with sizeable waves on its surface.

No one was around on the outside.

Tinker Bell and Robin Hood were standing guard behind the glass door at the entrance. The woman had a pouch of fairy dust on her belt ready to be used at a moment’s notice and the man had his bow in his hand and golden arrows in his quiver that hung from his shoulder. The expression on their faces screamed their unease. They were both obviously thinking about what the light show that they could see more and more often and the unnatural weather could mean.

They didn’t even notice that they gravitated closer to each other until they managed to actually bump into each other. The woman actually jumped into the air like she was about to take off flying.

“Sorry …” Robin apologized but before Tink could say anything, right in the second their eyes meet, they started to laugh. It was relieving some of the stress and they didn’t stop until tears were rolling down on their faces. Finding this moment of true calm in the storm around them felt like eating chocolate at the end of a bad day.

It became just a little bit easier to wait for the news whether Team Storybrooke managed to succeed with the plan.

During their moment they missed that not only the wind stopped but a figure appeared in front of the building. By the time they looked outside again the only thing they saw was that the sun on the sky and the wind slowed to a calm breeze now.

“Do you think they did it?” Robin asked his companion who was asking herself the same question.

“Let’s hope so,” was all she said.

That’s when they heard the screams.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Down the hall and a couple of turns and steps of stairs away the School’s gym was filled with kids and parents and a couple of fairies. Shielded from the outside world they were in their little bubble that was sustained by the atmosphere that the playing kids’ presence created.

The Charmings were standing with the parents, talking with some of them while little girls and boys were running around them playing, obviously enjoying the adventure that everyone coming to the gym meant.

David still had Andy strapped to his chest and he was smiling as he exchanged baby experiences with the other dads and moms obviously very happy about being able to do it. Mary Margaret was watching her boy and her husband with adoration shining in her eyes.

Three steps away from them Regina was having a conversation with Henry. Whatever their topic was the serious part of it must have been over because the boy was quite excited about something. He was smiling at his mother and talked animatedly, gesturing with his hands just like Regina usually does but his facial expressions were spot on Emma.

Roland was at their feet with two other boys his age. They were playing with different toys; a fire truck, an ambulance and a helicopter. They were having a great time despite not having an idea on why they are there.

That was when without any warning sign someone teleported into the middle of the room. The kids could instinctually feel that something was very wrong and they started to run towards the other adults in the room, including the ex-Evil Queen. By the time everyone was gathered behind Regina and the fairies the light purple smoke dissipated and in its place one Emma Swan appeared.

For a split second Regina smiled seeing the woman and so did Henry, David and Mary Margaret but the first two quickly changed their expression.

“Emma’s magic is blue or white,” Henry stated and Regina nodded.

“Be careful. That’s not our Emma,” the Mayor warned everyone and smiles from the Charmings’ faces quickly turned into frowns.

“Who are you?” Regina demanded to know while holding her hands out to keep everyone behind her, families, among them her own makeshift one.

The fairies tried to help her by stepping forward to form a line, some were even considering using the dust on Emma, not that it would do much harm to someone with light magic. While they were contemplating whether to try it at all their visitor made a move.

If the color of her magic and the fact that she did not land on her ass weren’t enough cause for suspicion the fact that their usual Savior produced black fairy dust out of the red leather jacket she was wearing and used it to neutralize the winged women in the room was more than sufficient proof. They all fell down to the ground, dead to the world for the next eight to twelve hours.

“I knew you would know if I tried to take her place. I am glad I didn’t do it sooner but how I wanted to. She is exquisite, Regina. All this raw power coursing through her but I don’t have to explain that to YOU. As for your question, I will tell you before I kill you but before we get there I am going to take everyone you love away from you.”

Regina actually rolled her eyes hearing the same old threat she had been hearing frequently in the last few years while most people present were trying to get over how surreal was to hear their Savior’s usually joking voice this sinister.

‘Emma’ didn’t like that facial expression on Regina’s face so she moved and threw an energy wave right at the Mayor to give merit to the threat.

The Queen put up her hand and easily deflected the attack but possessed-Emma wasn’t bothered by that if anything she enjoyed seeing the anger starting to flow through the usually regal woman. Regina gathered enough of that emotion to throw a good punch and directed it towards her attacker but the Shadow – unlike that body’s usual occupant – easily defended itself with a simple and elegant hand movement that could not be less Emma Swan.

“You know, Regina, I am conflicted. See I am not sure who to take away from you first.” The Shadow mockingly started to consider while it stroked Emma’s chin as if she was having real difficulty with the decision. “I think I am going to start with the boy!”

David held his son even closer as Mary Margaret stepped next to them. They couldn’t help it even though the threat was definitely not against him.

Regina looked to Henry and then to Roland in a heartbeat then shouted, “Over my dead body.”

She attacked again but it was not more successful than the first one. It was making her furious.

The Shadow in Emma on the other hand was extremely entertained by it and kept on goading her. “Don’t be ridiculous, of course, I meant the Savior’s son. After all he is the only one in this room who calls you ‘Mom’ no matter how you might want to hear it from the other one. And don’t worry; YOU don’t get to die… yet. Not until you are on your knees begging for me to end your pathetic, miserable life. In this body, with this much magic at my disposal it won’t be even hard.”

One lazy hand movement later Henry screamed, “Mom!” seeing how this new wave was far more powerful. His brunette mother slid at least 15 feet until she managed to stop the attacking energy and the movement of her own body. He always knew Emma was strong but to see his suspicions confirmed with witnessing as she was trying to use it to harm his other mother squeezed his heart and created knots his stomach.

Despite all of Regina’s bravado he could see it clearly that his mother knew that the Shadow was right, that Emma was stronger, and that she was in real trouble.

“You have to get Henry, Roland and the kids out of here!” Regina practically screamed at David and Mary Margaret while she tried to recover. To her surprise, after years of arguing neither of the two idiots had anything to say they just nodded at the same time and grabbed hold of Henry who wanted to resists but uncharacteristically couldn’t. He was still in shock trying to find a way to fix their current predicament. Mary Margaret held him close to her body while David went and did what Regina still believed he was cut out for, shepherded the kids and the parents towards the exit.

The doorknob didn’t move under his hand though.

Emma laughed at the attempt.

“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?”

“Hold hands,” Regina demanded and everyone without a second thought followed her request.

“That’s not going to help them. You can’t teleport all of them out of here not without giving me an opportunity to end you and with this many people you’d need someone to actually go with them for it to work too. Unfortunately your Savior is currently preoccupied with trying to fight me. Unfortunately for her, I am too strong for her so she is being tortured in her head by thoughts of her body – the very same body that gave life to him – killing her only son,” the creature in the Sheriff’s body taunted.

Regina sneered and the look on her face and the one appearing on Mary Margaret’s were scarily identical.

“Henry, sweetheart,” Regina asked her son and the boy started to wave at possessed-Emma to show what she hadn’t had the time to notice; he was not wearing his bracelet anymore. Regina gave them a significant energy boost and the boy’s help they all teleported out of the room, to safety.

That got whoever was in Emma’s body so angry she literally exploded throwing off the previously closed door off of its hinges as well as Regina right into the wall bars behind her.

It hurts to stand and she knew that she was going to have nasty bruises. She was trying to slowly regulate her breathing. Helping Henry with teleporting so many people and withstanding these extremely strong attacks were quickly draining her resources but she knew she had to keep this thing here and occupied longer if she wanted to give the ones that escaped time to get far away from here. She threw an earthquake at Emma but she knew very well that it was only good for stalling and so did the Shadow who was not bothered by it in the least.

That’s when Tinker Bell and Robin arrived. The man tried to use three arrows at once to keep what obviously wasn’t their Sheriff busy and Tinker Bell used fairy dust against her. The Shadow just laughed at both attempts as she easily stopped the arrows in the air and threw the dust back at Regina. The particles don’t mix well with her magic. It hurts like hell but thanks to the fact that it wasn’t entirely dark anymore she managed to keep it in, savor and then use it.

“You can’t hurt me. No one can,” the Shadow rallied them. “Your son might be safe, the little bastard but you…”

That was the moment when said boy rematerialized next to his mother.

“Oh, Henry!” Regina sighed with ‘why did you have to inherit THIS from your mother’ clear in those two words.

“Mom, I can help,” he said as he run to the woman and tried to help her up but Emma was already moving and throwing a spell at him that glued him to the ground so that he couldn’t move.

“I guess he has too much Charming in him to know what’s good for him.”

Emma’s left hand moved without her soul’s permission and conjured up a fireball in her hand.

“Using this would be poetic, don’t you think?”

Regina growled at the smiling woman while Henry redoubled his attempts at trying to change his position to at least become a moving target instead of a sitting duck but he was unable to.

In all the noise of the battle no one noticed as Ruby and Granny arrived. The older woman had her crossbow ready in her hand and she didn’t hesitate to target Emma who was obviously not their Emma.

Three things happen simultaneously; the fireball was thrown, Granny fired and Regina teleported.

The Shadow concentrated on stopping the arrow while Regina tried to deal with the orange colored attack against her son but neither woman was successful.

Possessed-Emma couldn’t understand why her magic wasn’t working suddenly but then she noticed the new accessory she had on her wrist; Henry’s bracelet. That made her even more confused because that piece of metal shouldn’t stop the Savior’s magic from working yet it did. The highjacking entity quickly concluded that she miscalculated how her consciousness residing in the body of the woman called Emma Swan was going to affect her magical abilities.

While getting to this conclusion the Shadow only managed to step away in the last possible second before getting wounded and then started to search for the boy and saw that the little bastard was on the move now without his shoes and he was helping his mother with literally landing a hand to destroy the fireball that until then seemed to be an unstoppable force for the Queen. She quickly began to march towards them.

Granny and Robin both used their bows to try to occupy their enemy to gain those couple of seconds that mother and son needed yet to be successful. The creature in the Sheriff caught the golden one moving towards her left shoulder with a practiced movement but the other one entered Emma’s body on her left one.

The metal piercing flesh and drawing blood first just angered their enemy more but then it had an effect that neither the Lucas woman nor Robin, Tinker Bell or even the now barely standing Regina expected; black smoke started to pour out of every pore of the Sheriff’s body.

The phenomena brought only a short relief as the being that took control over their Savior immediately took on its non-corporeal, smoky form.

The Shadow didn’t even consider Emma who collapsed onto the ground for a round two, it knocked Granny and Ruby on its way straight for Robin, who still had his bow in hand with an arrow on target. He shot at the creature but it’s in vain as the golden tipped piece of wood and feathers flew through their target as if there was nothing there. It happened in less than three seconds and suddenly the malicious thoughts of the creature they believed to be Peter Pan’s Shadow came from Robin Hood’s mouth.

“You know this body may not be that strong magically speaking but I know that HE killing your son will probably hurt even more than if it were your precious Savior.”

Regina tried to teleport the bow from Robin’s hand but it didn’t move an inch. Henry also gave it a try but even together there was no use.

“You drained yourself so much you can’t do any magic for at least a couple of minutes. Look at you, you can barely stand and I am willing to bet that your boy is not trained in catching arrows.”

Regina tried to get Henry behind her body but the boy fought her.

There was movement in front of them.

Emma Swan had gotten herself up on her knees. She was not in much better shape than Regina was but she had her service weapon in hand. That gave Regina both hope and filled her with dread at the same time.

The Sheriff’s hands were shaking she could barely point the gun but she didn’t have much time. Possessed-Robin had his bow in his hand and he was about to release a golden arrow that would end her son’s life.

Emma used both her hands to steady the shaking, and waited for a heartbeat then pulled the trigger without warning.

The man with the arrow and bow collapsed and black smoke poured out of him so fast for a second that was all everyone could see instead of the state his body was in. Then the smoke cleared and Regina’s scream froze the blood in all of them as she fell down onto her knees.

Henry couldn’t believe his eyes.

Robin Hood was on the ground, unmoving, white as a sheet. There was a hole in his chest where his heart used to beat and there was a sizeable pool of blood beneath him painting his white shirt red.

“I didn’t… Oh, my God, I didn’t. It… Oh, my God!” Emma threw the gun away and with that she run out of the gym as fast as her legs could carry her as tears started to stream down on her face.

Regina practically crawled to the man on the ground and she was not in the present anymore, the building shifted to that barn and the man on the ground shifted from Robin to Daniel and back again as if they were stuck in limbo, as if she was stuck in limbo.

She tired to heal him. The wound stayed gaping, mocking her as the tears from her eyes fell onto his face.

She kissed him.

He didn’t gasp or started to move.

She thought she was strong enough for this.

She was wrong.

After his initial shock Henry slowly started to move towards his mother but she couldn’t hear him calling her ‘Mom’ before she teleported away with the body.

They appeared at the Mills family crypt in the same position they have disappeared.

She tried to keep him warm but with the blood loss the body was already getting cold. She wanted to put him under the preservation spell. She had everything here to perform the spell.

He could be brought back. She knew he could be.

Except she knows _he_ wouldn’t want that. She remembered how DANIEL reacted. The pain HE was in. She wanted to talk to _him_ , hear his voice to at least say goodbye but she didn’t want to hurt _him_ like she had to hurt HIM.

Not _him._

This feeling of helplessness was chocking her.

She didn’t want to feel this way.

She didn’t want to feel at all.

The black coffin appeared out of thin air and then she transported him in it. The second the lid closed on him and she couldn’t see his face anymore every single horrible thing that happened to her since Daniel’s death started to swirl in her brain.

She couldn’t handle it. She opened the door in her mind, a familiar door that existed for as long as she could remember and shoved Regina Mills and her feelings into it and all that was left was the Evil Queen at the reins and she wanted one thing; Emma Swan’s red, hot and vital blood running down her fingers as she held her traitorous heart.

But not before she had suffered.

No. The Savior had to feel the weight of what she had done and she knew exactly what will break the woman completely.

She took off the bracelet from her wrist. Roland made it to her as a gift. A teardrop fell down onto the fabric in her hand.

She was surprised by it but she didn’t care. Her tears meant nothing for so long and now they don’t mean anything again.

She WILL do this.

THIS TIME there will be nothing and no one to stop her from getting revenge.


	6. It Was Only One Hour Ago It Was All So Different Then

Emma was sitting at her table at the Sheriff’s station just like she did this morning, only now the last thing she had on her mind were boredom and worrying about what could go wrong.

It all went to hell now.

She was beating herself up mentally with her thoughts and physically with swallowing large gulps of the only remedy she could think of using; a bottle of strong stuff. The glass container in her hand had a quarter of the liquid it originally held missing already and the Sheriff wasn’t slowing down, on the contrary, she was drinking more and more enthusiastically to try to stop the same, horrible pictures from flashing before her mind’s eye.

Unfortunately, numbing herself of feeling anything at all didn’t seem to work as well as she wanted it to but she had no idea what could do the job.

The deafening silence around her was broken by loud footsteps. Her parents arrived in a hurry.

„Is it true?” Mary Margaret asked without preamble.

The Sheriff didn’t look up at them her eyes didn’t leave the liquor bottle in her hand for a second. The action squeezed her mother’s heart but she had to know so she asked again.

„Emma, just tell us, please. Is. It. True?”

It still had no effect on the Sheriff who was trying her best to pretend she was still alone in the room. Hearing the tone of her own voice, the fear in it, and David’s hand on her back made Mary Margaret realize how that must have sounded.

She moved next to her daughter, away from her husband’s touch to look her over. She noticed the blood from the wound on her shoulder and the bracelet that her grandson used to wear ever since they have bound his magic. It confused her more than anything because it didn’t make any sense for it to be there. It never worked ON EMMA. She was there when they tried and her daughter blown up a door with that thing on her wrist.

She still took it off and threw in on the desk without looking away from the crushed woman.

“Bring a towel, Charming, please.”

David did as he was told.

Mary Margaret crouched next to Emma and checked the wound then looked up at her injured daughter’s face. Their eyes met for only a second. Emma turned away from her as if her mother would get burned from what she could see behind her tears.

David returned and gave Mary Margaret the item he was sent to get. The teacher pushed the towel to the wound to see how strong the bleeding still was.

“It’s going to be okay, sweetheart. Could you tell us what really happened?” David asked with a shooting voice trying not to stress the _really_ and failing miserably.

Emma could hear how much he wanted this to be a miscommunication. How much he wanted what they have heard to not be the truth. The tears that quickly started to slide down on her face, one chasing the other, shook David’s belief in the hope that he has clung to ever since the sentence letting them know what happened in the gym after they had left registered in his brain.

This wasn’t how the story was supposed to go.

She was supposed to save everyone and even if she couldn’t – because it happens – even then it shouldn’t have been her that made it all worse. It shouldn’t have been her that caused the death of an innocent.

The weight of that pushes heavily on the shoulders of Prince Charming since he had no idea how to deal with it. This didn’t happen to heroes.

Emma could understand him, after all he was Prince Charming but her mother didn’t flare better even though she had similar experience. She suspected that the woman who just checked the towel on her shoulder and found only a little blood on it had buried the memory of killing Cora Mills so deep in her mind that she was literally incapable of using that experience for anything. After all she had never dealt with it but pushed it under and pretended it never happened.

“You should go. Leave town. Just for a little while,” David suggested what is supposed to be a calm manner but the fact that she actually looked over her shoulder towards the door diminished the attempt. Not that it was a good one.

“It’s probably the only way you will be safe. You know as well as I do, reasoning won’t work on her. Not now. Not yet,” Mary Margaret agreed which only made it worse but at least she then amended. “This is the only way you can protect her now and you know it.”

It hurt that her parents were suggesting fleeing the town and the consequences and Emma suspected they wanted time to deal with this as much as they wanted to make sure she could do the same while she was safe.

She had no idea if she should be relieved that they didn’t seem to want to rekindle the old animosity that existed so long between them and Regina or she should be disappointed because her parents were essentially sending her away, again.

She gritted out a “No,” through her teeth because if Regina was indeed in such a dark place as she suspected she was than running won’t help. She would come after her to the end of the world. She didn’t want to go back to old habits either.

Running was not an option.

This was her home and this was her mess.

“Please,” David pleaded with his daughter.

This “No,” is accompanied with a burst of energy accompanying the glass shreds that flew everywhere from the impact on the wall behind David and Mary Margaret. They both looked there to witness some of the rich brown liquid flowing and then dripping from the white surface at a gradually slowing pace.

“What do you want to do then?” her mother tried a different approach. “Just sit there and wait? She is not in her right mind, Emma. She can’t be and if you let it turn into a fight it will most definitely end with you dead. And that will destroy Regina once and for all with everything that she worked so hard for.”

“I won’t run. Whatever happens I deserve it. It will be justified.”

David walked closer to her. “You don’t mean that!”

“No? What would you do if you were in this situation?”

Her father’s mouth was moving but there were no words coming out.

“Don’t even try to answer that.” Emma demanded but then she stopped before forming another word and looked intently towards the entrance of the office.

A second later two people walked into the room.

The little boy was holding the woman’s hand.

“Regina, please, listen to me,” Mary Margaret started to plead before anyone else could utter a word.

“I have no intention of listening to anything you have to say,” the Queen’s voice ringed final.

Emma’s mother noted with fear that she had never seen Regina this way before, NEVER. There was only so much beating a soul could take after all. Still she had to try so she opened her mouth but she had to realize that her vocal chords didn’t work.

Regina did that somehow, she knew. She looked to her husband but he was having the same problem as she did.

“I brought his son so that YOU could explain to him what happened to his father. I thought you might want to be the one seeing how you are responsible,” the Queen said to Emma who was standing next to her table now.

Roland was oblivious as to what was going on. Emma wobbled and was on the verge of falling to her knees. She shook when she spoke. “You can do whatever you want, Regina, but don’t do it in front of the boy. Please.”

Regina Mills was pounding on the door. She was heard by the Queen and was promptly dismissed.

Roland was clutching his almost mother’s hand and Emma could see a sliver of clarity in the Queen. It made her venture to extend what she considered to be her last wish.

“Let them…” she nodded towards her father and mother, “…take him.” He doesn’t have to see whatever you plan to do to me. Robin wouldn’t want that.”

Emma was thrown to the wall behind her so strongly she ended up in a heap on the floor.

“You don’t get to speak his name!” the woman screamed in a voice so hoarse it made Emma’s throat clench. Breathing became hard through the huge knot in her esophagus.

That was when Roland pulled his tiny hand from the Queen’s grasp and stepped away from her, obviously frightened by what was happening.

Emma watched the boy’s reaction and it was her line of sight that the Queen followed to see and register what her actions were doing to the young boy.

Regina Mills was pounding on the door. She was heard by the Queen and wasn’t completely ignored.

“You two…” she nodded towards the Charming couple, “…take him away from here”.

David and Mary Margaret shared a look and it seemed like they will opt to stay, but then the Queen’s voice rumbled through the room again, and they basically jumped hearing it.

“This is a limited time offer. Leave in the next sixty seconds or I teleport him away from here and you can stay and watch. I might even use YOU TWO.”

“Just take the boy, and don’t look back,” Emma pleaded as she stood up on shaky legs.

The duo was still hesitating, though Roland had already moved at least three steps into their direction.

“MOVE!” Emma screamed at them, and that finally made them move. David run to Roland, picked the boy up and they left with Mary Margaret as quickly as they could.

The moment they were out of sight the Queen started to move towards Emma.

“Now, we both know that those two idiots will be coming back as soon as they can and I do not wish to be interrupted once we begin.”

Emma nodded as the Queen grabbed the towel on her shoulder, making the textile dig into the wounded flesh painfully, and the purple smoke that usually accompanies the brunette’s magic engulfed them both.

Emma found herself in a room that she has only been a couple of times before. They were in Regina’s home office.

This place was not among her suspected destinations. It was probably not the first anyone would be looking for them. They were going to go to the mausoleum first, maybe the Mayor’s office next but…

She didn’t have time to finish the thought in her brain when she felt a block of energy impact with her body that pushed her to the wall behind her. She didn’t think about it, she didn’t even try and still somehow instinctually severed the connection that was trapping her.

The Queen, just for a fraction of a second, was almost impressed but then Emma decided to speak and said the wrong words.

“I am so, very deeply sorry about what happened but I had no other choice left.”

“We always have another choice. Isn’t that what you and your family always say? Isn’t the good guy’s motto goes like there is always a way you just have to find it?”

Emma gulped and remained silent. She had been running what happened in that gym through her brain, step by step, ever since it happened but the conclusion she still ended up with remained the same.

The only thing she could have done differently was willing to risk Henry’s life. It was that or shooting her gun and she just couldn’t risk her son. It simply wasn’t an option so made the choice she thought she could live with.

A part of her wanted to ask the woman in front of her if she would have done it, would have risked the life of the most important person in their lives but in the meantime her silence was looked upon as a confession by the Queen and before she could speak up the woman pushed her back to the wall with unstoppable will.

This time she kept the blonde steadily pinned to it, securely blocking any self defense attempt, and started to magically choke the blonde that made the Savior unable to speak.

Her rage was just as apparent as Emma’s terror when she realized the cold, hard fact that she couldn’t think of a way to get out of this predicament.

As much as the Queen wished that the feeling of Emma’s life slowly slipping away satisfied her it was not enough. She marched straight to her, let her slide to the ground so that the sole of her feet touched the ground and then replaces her mental energy with the actual physical strength her hands could exert.

The brief reprieve where she got to suck some oxygen into her lungs was enough to give her a boost and the skin to skin contact was much more familiar to Emma than magical energies. It was something she had always been able to fight. She gathered all her strength and tried to push the Queen off of her, gritting her teeth as the motion hurt her injured shoulder. They actually stumble from the wall but only a couple of inches before the Queen pushed her back again.

Regina Mills was pushing and kicking and hitting the door but it’s to no avail.

Emma started to lose hope and the part of her, the part that was wrecked with guilt and felt like Regina deserved to be able to have her revenge gave up. She trued to communicate with one look what not even tremendously talented human beings were able to express with words, but the Queen was not even looking at her. She was concentrating on her kill but the change, the fact that it suddenly became easy and there was no more resistance, was enough for her to regain some of her ability to think – and for that door to burst open – and really close to the last possible second Regina Mills let Emma go and stepped away from her.

Emma was coughing and heavily leaned on the wall as she tried not to slide to the floor of the office. She failed and then clutched her aggravated wound.

Regina was fighting herself to gain control over the urge to just finish what the Queen; NO, WHAT SHE started until Emma was dead on that floor, the same way the man whose life she had taken was.

“Why did you stop?” Emma’s voice grated while she tried to collect herself enough to stand up.

“You want me to keep going?”

“I would…”

“I swear to God if you say something like you would understand I WILL rip your heart out and crush it beneath my feet.”

“But I do.” Emma stood up on wobbly legs. “I am so so…”

Regina was not one to make idle treats and she was immediately back in Emma’s personal space and her hand went straight into the blonde’s chest.

Emma sincerely believed that this was it for her, that there was no escaping death now, but Regina –  just like her mother a couple of years ago –  failed to remove the organ she had her hand wrapped around.

Her reaction was completely different from what her mother’s was back then though.

She looked right into Emma’s wide green eyes with awe which was a far cry from the previous death glare. There was this genuine wonder and Regina didn’t even think before the question was out of her mouth.

“What are you?”

“You know what I am.”

Regina couldn’t help but looked straight at Emma’s chest where her hand disappeared and thought about what could have once been if HE was just like…

Suddenly Emma pulled her close by the appendage that was in her body. Regina didn’t understand what was happening and why, so she looked up at the other woman.

There were only inches between them.

Their breaths mingled, eyes locked.

The distance between them was quickly disappearing and something unintentional almost happened before the spell they were in lost some of its power on Regina and she tried to step back. Emma kept looking at her the same way then the Savior’s right hand joined the one in her chest and grabbed hold of it to make sure that the other woman couldn’t let go. The Mayor kept pulling, not even realizing what the move would cause at this point and in a couple of seconds Emma’s beating heart was removed by their joined hands.

She groaned but otherwise seemed just as fascinated with the central muscle of her body as Regina was.

It looked nothing like what the woman imagined the product of true love’s heart would.

It was bright, so bright it was not even red but white which was why the obvious dark spots in it were so striking. There was also a light blue current moving around on the surface of it that felt like pure energy on the muscle.

It looked like a sculpture and captivated Regina so much she couldn’t look away.

Emma started to speak in a detached voice. “That one…” she pointed to the black spot closest to the center of the heart, “…is there because one of my stepfathers. He liked putting out his cigarettes on the unblemished skin of young girls.”

Regina mind flashed to seeing a scar next to Emma’s thumb and looked for it involuntarily. It was there plain and simple proof of what the Sheriff was telling her was the truth.

“The first time he had done it to me I had pushed him away, hard. He didn’t expect me fighting back and he was drunk enough to sway and fell. He hit his head on the coffee table. There was blood. So much blood. He never got up again. No one ever suspected me, the little blonde girl even with the burnt mark on my hand. After they quickly wrote his death off as a drunken accident I was just sent away to a new family. It was as if nothing had happened.”

“That one…” she switched to a black blob that was closer to Regina, “… is there because of the death of a woman. You see, she was the wife of my lover. She loved him so much, so blindly that when she found out about us she took pills. It was a desperate attempt to get his attention. She did it at our usual meeting spot so that we’d found her together.”

“I helped him take her to the hospital. I didn’t know about her – at least that’s what I was trying to convince myself, after – but I did know that he was lying to me. I just didn’t care because I was used to men hiding things from me. By the time we were able to get her to the ER it was too late. He cried like a baby when they told him and I ran.”

“I ran as fast as I could and never intended to look back. Still, karma is a bitch, and the next day I was on a bus and the person next to me was reading a newspaper article about what happened.  I don’t know why but I couldn’t stop my brain from reading a part of it. I wished more than anything that I didn’t after the one sentence my eyes decided to jump to, _‘They had two children and a third one on the way.’_ ”

Regina let go of the heart in shock but Emma kept talking and Regina couldn’t stop her because hearing all the terrible things the other woman felt compelled to share were actually making her own burden lighter.

“I liked him…” Emma moved onto the next flaw in her heart. “He was exactly my type. I almost said ‘I love you’ to him but I didn’t. I couldn’t. It was too perfect. He was too perfect. It kept bugging me and I wanted to explain it away more than anything so I did, for a while.”

“Then I happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and saw him kill someone. I wanted to explain that away too. He was an actual serial killer, can you believe it? In hindsight I shouldn’t have been surprised; he was my type after all.”

“I wanted to just run but he had money and connections in high places and I knew he would come after me if I just disappeared without any explanation. I couldn’t just go to the police either so I set a trap to the smug bastard who decided to date a bail bonds person for the thrill of it.”

“All it took was a tiny bit of antagonizing when he would believe that he had the upper hand and attack me. I was able to say to the cops that I acted in self defense when I shot him in the chest.”

Regina couldn’t help the wince when her brain filled in the blanks to create this story in her head and the man shot by Emma was not a stranger, not a serial killer but the man she shot today. She saw Robin Hood.

Emma kept talking without making the connection.

“I’ve only spent three days in a cell before I was let go because the forensic evidence supported my version of the story.”

“Enough.”

“But we are just getting to the good stuff, to all the people who have died because of the great Savior of all fairy tale characters.”

“Stop.”

“I don’t think I can. All of them see me just as this great hero, this Savior but you always saw me.”

The blue energy current that was running over the heart disappeared as Emma stepped closer and closer to Regina slowly squeezing her own heart. The blonde winced a bit but the pain didn’t stop her.

It never did.

Regina had to wretch the quickly beating muscle away from her before it was too much, and it turned into ash.

“Don’t!”

“But this is what you want. What I deserve.”

“No!”

 “What do you want then, Regina?”

“I want what I always wanted, a happy ending. But you, you took it away from me. I. WANT. IT. BACK.”


	7. In The Moment We’re Lost And Found

_“I want what I always wanted, a happy ending. But you, you took it away from me. I. WANT. IT. BACK.”_

The anger reappeared but instead of ending a life it manifests in surprisingly strong punches to the middle of Emma’s chest. The Sheriff welcomed their sting, still she couldn’t help her body’s instinctual reaction to protect itself. She grabbed Regina’s wrists when the woman was about to strike for what would have been the fourth time.

They end up in an impasse.

“Let me go,” Regina screamed while trying to get free, in the process squeezing the heart she was still holding without really meaning to.

Of course, Emma immediately complied.

It just made Regina angrier.

“How could you do this to me? YOU OF ALL PEOPLE! Why couldn’t you just…”

That’s it when Emma interrupted while her heart beat more and more violently in Regina’s strong grip.

“WHAT? LET HIM SHOOT THAT ARROW THAT WAS POINTED AT OUR SON?”

In the vacuum of Emma’s thundering voice Regina froze as if the weight of a ton of bricks had slammed into her. When she looked into the other woman’s tear filled eyes her heart clenched even more painfully.

“You are blaming me for his death and you are right. I screwed up. I was in no condition to fire a gun but I did,” Emma’s throat closed up as she tried to swallow before continuing, “and I ended up killing a good man. But I rather it was him and not Henry and I know you feel the same way, Regina. Kill me if you think that will make you feel better. Crush my heart and be done with it, just do something.”

They were staring at each other both breathing heavy. Regina for a second felt like doing exactly that. She moved her fingers to hold it more strongly, before she plunged the white and black organ right back into the left side of Emma’s chest.

The Sheriff couldn’t help gasping at the sensation or closing her eyes for a second as she regained her ability to feel as a whole or at least as much as she could at the moment.

When she opened them she saw Regina staring off into space. She knew that look on her face, knew exactly what it meant. She had been right about what would have happened back in the gym if Regina had been the person holding that gun and not her.

The confirmation of understanding didn’t make it any better though if anything it just became even harder, the burden of it getting heavier with seeing that Regina was unable to deal with it better than she could.

Instead the Mayor was shutting down in front of her, quite quickly.

The “Go away, Emma,” just confirmed it about three seconds later when she turned away from her.

“No,” Emma stated with force behind the word. “I am not going to leave you alone.”

“You should. Leave. Until you can.”

Emma couldn’t see the other woman’s face but she knew her voice very well.

“No,” she repeated with conviction. “You would have already killed me if you...”

“You are more confident about that than I am.”

“What do you want?”

“I already told you.”

“That’s not an option.”

Regina whirled back to Emma, “Then I want this day to have never have happened. Can you do that, Swan?”

Tears shone in both their eyes.

“Can you, Emma, please? Just make it go away.”

The Sheriff moved to her and pulled her close until the brunette clung to her and they were hugging and Regina was crying into her shoulder.

Neither of them would have been able to tell how long they stayed like that but neither of them even thought about letting go.

They didn’t think about it.

There was no staring at each other lips and lingering eye contact, they just found themselves already kissing.

Regina was the one who started to move them backwards. They stumbled a bit but soon Emma’s back collided with the wall. They stayed like that, pressed together, their lips and tongues dancing to the melody of the same sad song.

The tear streaks running down on both their faces slowly evaporated. Their hands started to map out the other’s body touching jaws, necks, hands, breasts. They were gentle but insistent. The physical pleasure coursing through them after all that pain felt overwhelming.

Regina sought out Emma’s chest involuntarily to feel that white but black and still so strong heart that was in her hand a few minutes ago. It was beating violently against the insides of other woman’s skin, galloping the same rhythm as the one in her own ribcage. She massaged the skin there to feel herself closer to it again. The compulsion was so strong that after bunching Emma’s shirt into her fist she let go and moved to push the Sheriff’s leather jacket off of her shoulders.

The blonde helped her with moving away from the wall slightly and Regina threw the clothing item behind her only separating their lips for three deep breaths that were just enough for Emma to maneuver the brunette’s blazer off too.

Then she pulled Regina back to the wall with herself where the Mayor started to kiss down the blonde’s neck. Her fingers slowly divested the sheriff out of her grey shirt too.

“Re..gina,” Emma could barely whisper the name and it sounded like ‘Please’ more than anything else, which she didn’t have to say out loud because the woman currently sucking her neck had recognized her unsaid request for what it was.

Regina slowly but deliberately moved her thigh between Emma’s legs and applied just the right amount of pressure as she threw one more garment behind them. The answering groan Emma let out sent a shiver down the brunette’s spine that coiled lower still, making her feel warm.

The Sheriff rocked into her and squeezed her waist, lower and then tried to find how to begin taking off her dress. Regina didn’t leave her time to accomplish the task as she started to loosen Emma’s belt buckle and then opened the button on the woman’s jeans but her patience only lasted long enough to pull down the zipper and sneak her hand right inside before she pressed herself back into her previous position.

The first touch through her wet underwear felt cold and made the Sheriff moan the Mayor’s name with that same tone once more and the brunette’s insides actually clenched hearing it. There was a noise coming out of her throat that she was not sure she ever made it before.

The waves of sound reverberated on the skin of Emma’s neck and the sensation must have been exquisite on the sensitive flesh if the rush of fresh wetness seeping through Emma’s panties was any indication.

Those tight blue jeans were still too restrictive to move the way she wanted to, so with help, Regina started to pull it down, incapable of waiting any longer.

Having the opportunity Emma striped out of her remaining clothes in such effective moves she could teach a class on them. When there was nothing left but the, in certain places blacker than usual, panties Emma moved, determined to find out how to take that blue dress off of her but Regina stopped her before she could even start and pulled off Emma’s only remaining article of clothing.

Now the Mayor had free reign over Emma’s hot, wet flesh.

The blonde suddenly didn’t mind so much that Regina was still dressed – although the brunette was quite disheveled too – as the feelings building inside her forced her to close her eyes and just feel what the touches on her skin translated into in her brain through her firing synapses.

Regina was working her up steadily and methodically with circular motions around her clit and the occasional teasing of the entire length of her labia.

It felt satisfying beyond the telling of it to have this connection with Emma who was moaning louder and louder while holding onto Regina’s shoulders to keep herself upright while her pelvic moved in steady circles.

The woman’s breathing became even shallower and hotter in her ear when Regina mixed up her pattern and plunges two fingers into her warmth. The rocking motion of the brunette’s pelvic was making the pressure all the more delicious, the penetration even deeper. Emma was twitching and shaking now and Regina quickened her moves and targeted Emma’s g-spot.

They were both panting now, heavily.

The stimulation of those nerves and the sudden strong direct contact on her rock hard clit via a slick thumb sent Emma into darkness and light at the same time.

Regina didn’t stop though she kept moving and touching and if Emma’s brain would have been able to make one conscious thought she would suspect the aid of magic behind the second orgasm that washed over her because it was just never ending.

When it did subside to small after tremors and then ended she took a couple of deep breaths.

When she opened her eyes she looked at Regina with such passion the brunette could almost taste what was coming.

She tried to step back to give Emma space to move but the Sheriff used the wall to gain leverage and collided into the Mayor to move her. She pivoted them clumsily and pushed Regina back to her previously occupied space and pressed into her.

It was a small miracle she managed to do that without collapsing on her jellified legs but she didn’t.

The pressure the blonde exerted felt like being alive, which was why Regina voiced a frustrated groan when too soon, she moved away from her.

The Sheriff used the distance for well targeted, slow caresses throughout every inch of the other woman’s still covered body. She paid extra attention to Regina’s right thigh. The brunette lift the leg in question up and settled it next the other woman’s hip to give her more access while simultaneously trying to find some friction where she throbbed and dripped with want.

It was not enough but it was an obvious sign that Emma understood it and after a particularly hard hair pulling at the nape of her neck she decided to give in.

She lifted up the brunette with ease. Regina was nonplussed by the feat she just wrapped her legs around Emma’s waist, as if they had been practicing this move for years.

The Sheriff on the other hand couldn’t tell, even if a gun was pointed at her head, whether she was doing this thanks to the adrenaline and endorphins coursing through her veins or she was using her magic.

At the moment she couldn’t care less.

She walked effortlessly with her cargo, kissing Regina earnestly as she moved towards the desk passing by her own discarded clothes, among them her usual red armor.

Emma didn’t stop until they were right in front of it and then she set Regina on the top of the flat surface.

They barely came up for air and Regina kept her legs in place as Emma run her hands over and over them, from thighs to calves massaging the flesh there. Then the Sheriff pried the legs away from around her hips to be able to move more.

Her general direction was downwards on Mayor’s body starting from her lips. Her hands were relentless and they found the zipper she failed to locate before. Regina jumped off the desk not wanting anything between them anymore.

As the garment fell to the ground the Sheriff was greeted with the sight of a royal blue bra encasing mouthwateringly perfect, tanned breasts and panties of the same color covering Emma’s endgame. Her first target was her chest. She kissed the skin just over Regina’s wildly beating heart and it sent a shiver down the brunette’s body.

She spent some time with teasing both globes through the fabric before freeing them from their confines so that there was nothing that separated her tongue from the heaving flesh.

The muscle working wonders around her areola and the nipple sucking soon had Regina lifting her hips in a steady rhythm colliding in measured intervals with Emma’s stomach. It was not nearly enough.

It was driving her mad.

The blonde suddenly stilled her with pressing down on her pubic bone and simultaneously biting down on one hardened peak.

It was so good.

Regina’s breathing was beyond labored now. It didn’t help when Emma grabbed her by the waist and pulled her to the very edge of the table. The Sheriff took off her panties and then arranged their pelvises so that for a precious moment their mounds were in direct contact.

It sent jolts through both their bodies.

Emma kissed her then returned to teasing the left breast only for a little bit before she steadily began to move towards south. Regina could barely stand the built up pressure between her legs and when Emma casually blew cold air into her bellybutton it was almost enough to make her come.

Almost.

She forced herself to lie back down on her back and moved both her hands into Emma’s hair to guide her to where her body sobbed and cried and jumped for attention.

Still, Emma, infuriating as ever, carefully avoided the spot where she wanted her most.

The casual lick on the length of her labia made the woman on her back see stars but Emma was careful not to put any pressure on where it would be too much. Instead she spread the brunette as far as she could and started to tease her entrance with her tongue.

Regina was throbbing so hard now she turned half deaf from the blood rushing in her ear.

Every pore in her body was bubbling up pleasure.  She screamed at the top of her lungs when Emma finally put just the right amount of pressure on her clit with her tongue and then started to suck, hard.

She would have been embarrassed by the amount of liquid that poured out of her if she had any functioning brain cells left that would have been capable of feeling anything other than the pure ecstasy cursing through her veins.

When her body recovered Emma kissed both sides of Regina’s inner thigh and it was like a shock to the system when her orgasm was still tingling in her pores.

The Mayor found the strength in herself to pull Emma to her and sit up at the same time and she kissed her own taste off of Emma’s mouth.

The Savior started to climb up on top of her.

They were not done. Not by a long shot.

__________________________________________________________________________________

**SOME TIME EARLIER**

The air felt damp and it was cold, much colder than it was outside. At least the chains that were used to imprison him to the wall of the cave got warmer now. He didn’t know where he was just that he certainly hadn’t been there before. That ruled out a significant portion of the mines but they were not this spacious to begin with. Still he was somewhere underground he just had no idea where exactly.

She was telling him her plan, the details of this grand revenge. Outwards he was showing his poker face but the more he heard the more the cruelty of it infuriated him. As much as he didn’t want to believe that this scheme could work he had no way of being absolutely sure about that.

Not after what happened.

Not after how it happened.

He stopped fighting with the shackles in these situations a long time ago knowing very well that rattling the chains only gave satisfaction to the captor and he really, really despised the soreness it caused after he escaped – and he did, every single time. He needed his hands at one hundred percent for his weapon of choice anyways. Yet, right now he was very close to losing his patience and possibly severely injuring his wrists while trying to break free.

His captor, looking like Tinker Bell walked around in the cavern as she goaded him about how Regina had to feel right now. It crept him out to see his friend act like this.

He was alive, his heart was pumping yet this woman made her feel utterly useless as if he had really died from that gunshot wound that was never inflicted upon him to begin with.

She gleefully waved her hand towards the mirror on the wall of her makeshift dungeon, angling it in a way that her prisoner had front row seat quality view of it. Robin could see that she was expecting a Regina screaming in pain or wreaking havoc on the town to be shown to them, maybe even a murder spree if she was really lucky and he wasn’t. He knew she would immensely enjoy seeing either version including his reaction to that happening.

What they got to witness instead made her eyes bulge out of their sockets.

Robin, after his initial shock, laughed out loud because what else could he do that did not provide one ounce of satisfaction for this vengeful woman even if it hurt and he suddenly felt this emptiness inside of him that echoed around inside his human body that felt too big for his suddenly oh so small soul.

The only damage Regina was doing at the moment was to one Emma Swan’s neck but from the looks of it the woman didn’t mind it one bit. The Mayor’s lips were on the Sheriff’s skin just under her ear and her tongue was swirling in pleasurable circles. When the brunette moved to take off the blonde’s grey shirt there was a shrill noise echoing through the cave coming from Tinker Bell’s mouth.

The mirror broke into a million tiny shards.

Robin’s laugh slowly died down but he decided to keep showing that he was amused.

"Explain that to me," she demanded nodding towards the fragments on the floor.

"You broke your mirror?" he managed to say with a serious expression on his face.

She marched to him got into his face and used her current body’s sharp nails to dig into the skin on his face and said, “I am not going to repeat the question.”

The "I don’t know,” leaving his mouth still didn’t sound like it should be coming from a man who was in his current position.

"You don’t know? YOU DON’T KNOW?” she repeated then turned away from Robin and started to pace.

“Weren’t you supposed to be her second chance at happiness? Weren’t YOU TWO supposed to move along in the courting process just tonight?"

"Well, yes."

"Then care to explain why your destined soulmate is sucking face with Snow White’s daughter instead of being devastated and throwing away everything that she had built in this town because of your death?"

"Because she decided to go for chance three?”

“Oh, you think you are being brave, aren’t you?” she asked and Robin already could feel that whatever will come next he won’t like it one bit. His captor strode back to him, put her hand above his heart and looked at him with clear intention, “I can make you talk.”

Robin knew immediately what she meant and knew he shouldn’t but couldn’t stop himself from goading her just a bit when he actually had a way to do so.

“Actually, no, you can’t. Regina’s made sure of that.”

Tinker Bell seemed to concentrate on something for a few seconds and realized that the man was telling the truth.

She found it but quite disappointingly for Robin she just smiled at him.

“You know there are other methods I can use.”

“Why aren’t you? I mean you could make me want to kill Henry but we are having a conversation right now?”

That assessment seemed to surprise and anger this woman at the same time, and he got a slap with some extra magic punch that hurt like hell.

“You can’t do it, can you? You can’t possess someone if you already been in them.”

“Oh, but I can torture you.”

Robin had experience with that and if he could withstand what Rumplestiltskin did to him then he could handle whatever was waiting for him now.

When his captor did make a decision about how to proceed it surprised him because she just waved her hand and her fingers were on fire but instead of moving them towards him she was moving them towards Tinker Bell’s throat.

“I like to cause and feel pain. She on the other hand, she is screaming inside. You care about her. I know. I remember feeling pieces of it. If you don’t want me to relieve my frustration on her you will give me real answers from now on or she will be the one suffering the consequences. Is that understood?”

That was good enough incentive for him and he talked and talked trying to gain some time because maybe everyone believed him to be dead but Tinker Bell should be there with the others and she should be missed.

They would be looking for her. She might be leverage for this woman but she was also hope for him.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. What happened between them is new. Or maybe it’s been developing all this time. They couldn’t be more different but at the same time they are very similar. The way they love Henry… Sometimes it’s like they understand each other better than anyone else ever could.” A beat passed as he tried to find something relevant to say among the jumble of words that were spewing out of his mouth but he failed to find anything. “What do you want to hear?"

“Could you be happy with someone else?”

Robin was confused for a second because that was not a question that he was expecting but at the same time he could answer this one with ease so he did.

“I already was. With my wife. With Roland’s mother. I loved her and I was very happy with her.”

“And now? If this woman you speak of were to walk into Storybrooke alive and well…”

“If I could have Marian back there would be no decision to make.”

“That shouldn’t be possible.”

“But it is.”

“What about YOUR connection with Regina? What about YOUR destiny together? Pixie dust doesn’t lie. Every fairy knows that. The one I am inside now knows it by heart. It was drilled into her. It’s the number one rule. They say it’s older than the Blue Fairy herself. It may be older than the world itself. Finding a soulmate means that they are the most perfect person for you. They should be the ones that can make you the happiest.”

“I have no idea about how this works but I can’t help how I feel.”

“You are saying that a thousands of years old law is just getting defied by you and Regina and the Savior?”

“You were in Emma. Don’t you know how she feels?

“Tinker Bell” thought about the question for a few seconds.

“She was hiding it even from herself but there was something there. Something strong. The moment I saw them in the mirror it all made sense. I should have realized I should’ve seen but the pixie dust blinded me to see the potential there. Well, not anymore and I really don’t have much use for the two of you anymore.”

“Wait,” Robin interrupted. “We can make choices. We have free will. You can find happiness in yourself or in others. Human nature is not the type of thing that abides any rules. It breaks them. It’s just a matter of time. It always is. And you should know, those two, together are stronger than you can possible imagine and they are going to kick your…”

Robin couldn’t finish the sentence before his captor made a hand movement that rendered him unconscious.

“We’ll see about that, peasant. I am keeping you alive… for now. You should die in front of her after all.”

She laughed then shed her vessel. Tinker Bell fell to ground, unconscious and in her place stood a smoke figure.

It was a woman.

It was Maleficent.

She flew away towards the town with malicious intent.

__________________________________________________________________________________

It was silent but not awkward, more resigned than anything, as they were dressing side by side but angled away. There were only a couple of touches missing before they were completely presentable. Regina mended her blouse easily, Emma combed her fingers though her blonde tresses.

“Do you want to talk?” the Sheriff asked oddly calm.

“What do you want to talk about? That you killed my boyfriend or that we fucked away some pain?”

Emma winced.

“I thought more around the lines of ‘Where do we go from here?’”

“Oh, I think I will be the one to tell you that, Savior,” a stranger’s voice surprised both women as this third person entered the study as if they were the one at home.

“Your new destination is Storybrooke, Cemetery.”

“This just never stops, does it?” Emma uttered the hypothetical question directed towards Regina but when she saw the look on the other woman’s face she suspected that this was not going to be easy either.

She stepped in front of Regina.

“Who are you?” she demanded to know from this strange blonde woman.

“You should know. After all you are the one who killed me.”

Emma suddenly resembled a fish on dry land trying to decipher the meaning behind that sentence.

“What the hell does that even…?”

“Maleficent!?” Regina interrupted and answered at the same time.

Slowly but surely more of Emma’s blood started to flow back into her brain and, with a bit of delay, she finally not just heard but started to understand what that name meant.

“Did you just say ‘Maleficent’? Wasn’t that the Dragon Lady from Cinderella?” And the wheels turned into the right position. “Oh…the dragon under the Library that I killed... But then how?”

“So sharp, Savior,” their visitor mocked.

“There was a spell in place making sure she lived no matter what but I thought that after...” Regina explained for Emma’s sake, and Maleficent took cruel pleasure in seeing the other woman understanding what her new lover was truly capable of.

“…The magic was sucked out of the town via your self-destruct device the spell stopped working and I expired? You were right, I died.”

“How are you here then?” Regina demanded to know.

“When the Savior killed me the curse transformed my body into a rotting creature. It was just enough to keep my soul trapped. Then I got some rest from that horrible existence when this town vanished but, of course, it had to be brought back into existence in the same form as it first existed, meaning with me, still trapped, nothing but a Shadow of my former self, literally.”

“You were the black smoke,” the Mayor concluded.

“Yes. You know, I’ve waited and waited and six months ago, it finally happened, the enchantment that kept me prisoner broke when the Library got destroyed but instead of letting me die it set me free. I can thank YOU that actually. Opening up the portal using all the power the Dark One, the Evil Queen and the Savior can muster right above my grave overcharged my curse and with it, me.”

“Suddenly, I got all the power in the world but no way of using it without a body that existed on the same plane as you did. I was nothing but a ghost but the kind of ghost that was able to access people’s thoughts. First they were just fragments but with time and I found I was able to read almost everything. Then I found I was able to control people and I slowly became able to affect reality for more than a couple of seconds. I practiced and in the meantime I gathered information.”

“I’ve managed to find out your deepest fears. You two have that in common; losing the boy. I knew I couldn’t go straight for him, even though you deciding on blocking his magic had made him an easy target, he was well protected thanks to his grandfather’s protection spell. So first I had to find a way to get rid of good old Rumple. It wasn’t even hard. Of course, you, Regina, had to go all understanding, perfect mother and take off that damn bracelet, letting him use his magic. It threw a wrench into my plan but fortunately, as every good villain, I had a Plan B in place.”

“Have the Savior kill your boyfriend seemed like a good enough substitute as in your blind wrath you would have killed the boy’s mother losing him in the process too. Obviously,” she gestured towards the wall where things turned a completely different turn, “I seriously misjudged your relationship. You had me fooled, Regina,” accused a woman’s voice. But until very recently,” she motioned this time between the two women, “you had been fooling yourself as well so my ego is not half as bruised.”

“You are wrong. I don’t feel anything towards Emma.”

“Sure. Sure. Soon I will know for sure.”

“What do you mean?” Emma inquired but Regina already knew the answer.

“Well, slow Savior, I am going to possess my dear old friend and then see for myself what she does or doesn’t feel for you.”

__________________________________________________________________________________

Meanwhile in the mines Tinker Bell regained consciousness but Robin was still out of it. She tried to nudge him and she called his name multiple times but neither helped. She was not sure why she was awake when the man next to him was completely dead to the world – no pun intended – but she knew she had to get them out of here.

She moved her head to her right hand grabbed a bobby pin out of her hairdo and started to work on the lock that was keeping her in place.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Now the prospect of one more possession scenario terrifies both women and their reactions painted a wicked smile on Maleficent’s only seemingly corporeal form. She started to dissolve into smoke and before they could do anything to stop her Regina was already taken over.

There was a foreign smile on the brunette’s face that was not at all out of place and still didn’t belong there at the same time.

“She has recharged completely. She is so strong and still dark enough to be a permanent host for me.”

“That’s what you are really after?” Emma tried to stall.

“Oh, that’s just a perk, Miss Swan.”

The Regina imitation was perfect and had Emma feel extremely uncomfortable. “

How does it feel to know that the same hands that were causing you to feel all hot and bothered and tingly not so long ago will be the same hands that are going to torture you and break your neck?”

Emma tried to ignore her words but they were like precise punches between her ribs. She was not going to just give up though and started to walk closer to the possession victim.

“Regina, please, I know you are in there. I know how impossible it feels. It’s like you are made from lead and you are trying to get out of quick sand that keeps pulling you down, but if there is one person that can overcome this, it’s you.”

Her pep talk had no effect. Regina was absent and Maleficent was fully in control, of Regina’s magic too what she proved with throwing Emma at the wall unceremoniously and keeping her pinned to it.

“I think I am going to stay in her and after finishing you off, kill the boy, too then let her live,” she kept a dramatic pause, “if she wants to.”

She was right in front of Emma now and she extended her hand towards Emma’s throat.

The Sheriff tried to use her magic but with Regina’s knowledge of her weaknesses and both their experience Maleficent easily avoided the powerful but predictable blow. She laughed at the blonde as she wrapped Regina’s fingers around her neck and squeezed with apparent glee digging those fingers into Emma’s flesh.

That was until a golden arrow went straight into possessed Regina’s right shoulder. Emma didn’t understand what was going on. Not until she looked towards the study’s door.

He was supposed to be dead yet Robin Hood stood in front of her with bow in hand and next to him was Tinker Bell. The pixie used fairy dust to try to immobilize their enemy but Maleficent easily deflected that attack. She pulled out the arrow and threw it away then healed the wound but in the meantime didn’t pay attention to Emma who was using the opening and knocked her unconscious from behind.

Robin and Tinker Bell run to Emma who’s caught Regina’s unconscious body before it landed on the ground.

“How long do you think we got?” Robin asked from Emma.

“I have no idea. Not too long.”

“You have to help her,” Tinker Bell said.

“Don’t you think I would already have already if I knew how? I fought like hell to get out under her control but I couldn’t even deter her for a second.”

“But you, you and her…”

Emma gulped audibly, so did Robin and it became obvious for the Sheriff that what she believed was her and Regina’s dirty little secret was out in the open for everyone in the room.

“It was nothing, just trying to cope,” Emma tried to deflect but the other two obviously didn’t believe her. “We have to go about this practically. What happened in the gym before, you know, I…,” she trailed down looking away from Robin back to Regina.

“You should know better than us. She was in your head but that means you were in hers too,” Tinker Bell added as if Emma could forget that part.

“Okay, okay. Let me think.” She knew herself enough to know that under pressure she will never get the answer no matter how much she wanted to so she tried to alleviate the pressure hoping the information will come to her on its own in an unexpected moment.

She turned to Robin with a neck pulling speed and fires the question, “How are you alive?”

“It was all a trick. She wanted Regina broken, she just chose the wrong target.”

Regina’s body was steering, Emma freaked and not just because of that.

“Oh, crap. I don’t remember anything. What’s the difference? You shot me, you shot her nothing happened but when Granny did it, it did the trick.”

Emma reached for one arrow and studied it in her hand. And then the difference just clicked.

“You have the golden arrows. Hers was iron. It’s iron. We need iron.”

Robin was already looking around for something and so did Tinker Bell but it’s the man who found the iron poker. He handed it to Emma who looked at him in an ‘are you serious’ way. He just shrugged.

“Don’t be picky, just poke her with it until you drew blood.”

Emma didn’t know if she should laugh or turn at least a hundred shades of red but when Regina opened her eyes she decided on neither and just stabbed the brunette’s leg with the weapon in her hand. The effect was instant. Maleficent was expelled from her host while the woman regained both consciousness and control over her body.

The first thing she saw was Robin. She smiled not remembering everything immediately but then quickly changed.

“It’s okay. I am fine. We will talk. You have to kill a ghost… with the Savior,” he added as an afterthought. Regina could feel he knew everything from that one poorly disguised uncomfortable look he switched between her and Emma but she also knew that the time for that delicate conversation was definitely not now.

Maleficent was already regrouping and was about to attack them, but before she could get close enough to probe for possession Robin swung at her non corporeal form with a poker and it worked. Tink grabbed one off of the rack too and joined him in ghost baseball. They were losing though and realizing it quickly they slowly started to back down.

Emma in the meantime helped Regina up. The brunette felt like punching Emma for needing her help but she was in no condition to refuse it.

“Are you ready to finish this?”

Regina nodded then grabbed Emma’s extended hand, their fingers laced together. When Maleficent charged again Robin and Tinker Bell were already behind them. Both women held their hands out and a light blue energy poured towards their enemy.

Maleficent laughed, “I don’t have a body anymore. You cannot kill me.”

“That is a problem I can solve,” Regina said and then teleported a small blood red crystal into her hand and threw it into the beam of her own and Emma’s joined energy.

“What did you do?” Maleficent demanded to know, but the effect of it was already showing. The black smoke was starting to resemble a human body again and then the sorceress becomes whole with a human body again.

“I just broke your curse.”

“I am still strong enough to take you.”

“Even after all that power you had to expel today? I don’t think so.”

Regina was now completely powered back up thanks to her personal battery. She let Emma’s hand go and started to move closer and closer to Maleficent who frantically tried to protect herself from the Queen’s solo but powerful attacks.

“You know,” ball of energy hurled, “I am trying to be good,” another one, “but I am not that good” that one hit Maleficent squarely on the chest, “especially when my son is threatened.”

The last one was followed by an actual physical punch that got the now rematerialized woman onto the ground.

Not one of the occupants of the room could even begin to try to talk Regina out of action before the brunette teleported a dagger out of thin air and plunged it straight into Maleficent’s heart. She twisted it for good measure.

The blood from the vile woman’s heart flowed freely from the wound when Regina pulled her weapon out only to let it clatter to the ground.

Life left the now corporeal form on the ground as red painted the floor a different color.

Robin and Tinker Bell were more shaken than Emma to see this side of the Queen but even they didn’t think it was time to give a lecture. After all the vengeful woman and Regina shared a body and if the brunette deemed this to be the right method to use then it had to be the right course of action.

Regina stood up and in the eerie silence she turned to her very much alive boyfriend whom she had seen killed by Emma Swan earlier today.

“It was just a trick then?”

“Yes,” Robin confirmed. “She wanted you to spiral out of control and destroy everything good in your life. She would have waited until you crossed the line then shown me to you alive and well after, so that you would know that you threw away everything for nothing. Then she would have killed me ‘again’ for real this time. She originally planned to use Henry but, fortunately, she couldn’t get to him.”

He was fidgeting and he was awkwardly looking back and forth between Emma and Regina during his explanation and the latter suddenly knew exactly what happened.

“She wanted to show you my meltdown but instead you saw me and Emma...”

She didn’t have to finish the sentence his reddening cheeks and inability to look her in the eyes were answer enough.

Emma was mortified and started to pace back and forth a few paces away from them full of nervous energy while Regina tried to figure out what Robin’s awkward but calm demeanor meant.

She’d understand anger, yelling, explanation demanding even name calling and swearing and she didn’t know how to handle his almost indifferent attitude.

“I am going to give you some time to talk… alone,” Emma spluttered out alternating between looking at her feet and their feet rather than either of them then proceeded with grabbing Tinker Bell’s arm at her elbow and pulling her out of the room.

“Robin, I can…” Regina started the second the door to the study closed in the front of the room.

“…Explain? You don’t have to. I understand.”

Regina looked disbelievingly at the man.

“Really, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.”

“It doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?” Robin asked with a pained smile on his face.

“Did you just break up with me?”

“Well, you slept with someone else.”

Hurt flashes across Regina’s face and the Thief backpedaled simultaneously as his own words registered in his brain.

“I promised myself I would handle this the right way. I am sorry for saying that. You thought I was dead and you were hurting and that can make people do things they otherwise wouldn’t.”

“Exactly. Could we just start over and forget this day ever happened?”

“We could but it wouldn’t be the same. The real question is do you really want to do that?”

It looked like Regina will tell him yes very quickly but there was no sound coming out of her throat when she opened her mouth. The hope that glimmered in Regina’s eyes faded away very quickly when she started to analyze how she really felt.

Her now ex-boyfriend could read the thoughts running through her head on her face clearly.

“Do you love her?”

There was still no answer and the Queen was suddenly even more submerged in the currents of her deeper thoughts.

“What happened two months ago?”

That inquiry shook her out of her one with the universe moment and her mouth turned into a thin line.

“It’s a simple enough question, Regina. What happened that day between you and Emma Swan that made you stop having any type of contact with her?”

“We had an argument.”

“You didn’t believe that I was going to be satisfied with that answer, did you?

“It got rather heated.” Robin was still looking at her expectantly when she finished so she sighed and added, “She said some things I didn’t want to hear.”

“And these ‘some things’ were connected to me, yes?”

Regina was surprised for a second that Robin would make that jump but then nodded and admitted, “Partially.”

“Tell me.”

She started halfheartedly first, “She drank too much.”

Despite her defensiveness Robin knew that Regina was going to tell him what happened. He was confident that whatever he was going to hear it’s going to be the truth and when after a couple seconds of contemplation Regina started her tale the confirmation that he knew her well enough to be able to predict this leaves a hollow, throbbing pain in his chest.

“Emma came to my house that night. She was in no condition to walk around but of course she did. She said she wanted to talk and was rather loud, obnoxious and tenacious about it so I agreed. I believed she needed to vent about whatever made her turn to the bottle, and as I considered her to be a friend, I wanted to try to help her.”

“I should have learnt my lesson about wanting to do that a long time ago.”

“First I listened as she complained about feeling lonely which I understood very well but that soon turned into a litany about how even though she was the good guy, _‘the freaking Savior’,_ she was alone while, I, the perpetual bad guy, the Evil Queen had a soulmate patiently waiting for me to just say yes and yet I hesitated.”

“She wanted to talk you into being with me?” Robin interjected, flabbergasted, as this bit didn’t fit into his theory about what happened between them at all.

“At first, I thought so but then she said she understood my hesitance. She dared to compare what you and I could have to what I had with the King. She accused me of giving away my free will once more.”

“That infuriating woman had the guts to come to my home and compare my precious second chance with you to an arranged marriage. All I saw was red when she said she wouldn’t agree to a union like that either no matter how much she desired romantic love in her life I couldn’t keep my anger in check. That comparison was a slap too strong for even my self control so I hit her.”

Regina fell silent as she was transported back to that night. Robin had to shake her out of the memory of how her hand hurt after it connected with Emma’s jaw.

“You hit her and then?”

“She hit back or at least tried to. She was so very wasted and uncoordinated I tried so very hard to not to take offence but she wouldn’t let me. I am absolutely positive that she wouldn’t have been able to stand on her feet if it wasn’t for her magic but she even managed to punch me and…”

Robin interjects, “You are stalling. What else happened? Did you two kiss or…”

“What? NO!” Regina actually seemed pretty indignant at the assumption and then in reflection to this day’s events she amended it to, “Not then, not until today.”

“Then what are you not telling me?”

“When I said I hit her that was a euphemism for almost killing her.”

“OH,” Robin was not expecting that answer either. After seeing what he saw he came to the conclusion that something physical must have happened that day between the women but his thoughts had created a different type of scenario. He stayed quiet for a few seconds while his thoughts shifted into creating new context for that night.

“That woman always knew how to get to me. It’s a talent of hers…”

“That’s not why you stayed away from her though, isn’t it?”

Regina for a moment looked terrified waiting for what he had to say because she knew he made the connections that she wanted buried for the rest of eternity.

“You stayed away from her because what she said got to you.”

Regina didn’t answer she just closed her eyes and Robin knew he made the right assumption.

“I didn’t want it to.”

“But you couldn’t help it. She knows you well enough that she knew exactly what buttons to push, didn’t she?”

“You are talking about us like she and I are heading for some kind of a relationship. Emma and I are barely friends on a good day. She is uncouth and an idiot and, most of the time, I can’t stand her.”

“The best ones always start that way,” he said smiling like he just told her the biggest secret that there was like he was remembering his own experience.

“No. No. No,” she shook her head. “This is… How did we get here? We were going out on a date tonight.”

“Why?” Robin asked unable not to. “You never told me what changed your mind and I was just so happy that you did that I never even thought about it.”

“We used to have dinner every two weeks,” Regina starts without hesitation, “Henry, me, Snow, David and Emma. After that night I didn’t go to the next one. The Charmings didn’t think anything of it. Henry covered for me and it wasn’t like I never stayed away before. Then the next week I knew Emma wouldn’t be there so I went and they didn’t make the connection for a while. But when neither of us showed the next time Snow came to me.”

“We talked and she asked me to come to dinner with them. Henry convinced me that it wasn’t going to be some kind of intervention and it wasn’t. Emma never showed. We just had a nice meal and we were sitting at the table and it just hit me as the two idiots were reminiscing about all the obstacles that they had to face to get together and how they have never stopped coming ever since but they wouldn’t have it any other way. I realized a little too late what they were trying to do. It got to me. If Snow White could do this so could I.”

“That’s why I went to you that night and asked you out.”

__________________________________________________________________________________

“So you and Regina? I didn’t seen that one coming,” Tinker Bell tried to lighten Emma’s mood but it didn’t cause even a miniscule amount of a change towards the desired effect. The woman didn’t even look at her after hearing that awkward conversation opener she just continued to pace back and forth.

“What is up with you?”

“Nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing.”

“You should go. Tell my parents and everyone else that the Shadow is defeated and that Robin is alive that I didn’t kill him in the end. They will be relieved.”

Emma’s whole behavior was weird but Tinker Bell decided it has to be the result of all that happened today generally and between her and the Queen and what was happening between said Queen and Robin right now.

It was an at least partially viable explanation.

“Fine, but you have to calm down, Emma. Just wait for it.”

“Wait? They are soulmates. They are meant to be what should I wait for?”

“You can never know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think you know.”

The outside world suddenly didn’t exist for Emma as she fell into herself and was in the moment so clearly and sharply and connected that it did make sense.

 “Just go. And Tink, please, don’t tell anyone about what happened between me and Regina.”

“Of course. Those are going to be your conversations to have.”

“Thank you. For everything.”

Tink nodded and then left while Emma brains spun her conclusions madly on, trying to figure out what she should do because it still felt like she couldn’t win this no matter what.

__________________________________________________________________________________

“Please, talk to me. Just tell me how,” Regina’s sentence was interrupted because Emma Swan just came back into the room without knocking. Neither occupant had enough time to register the energy crackling around the Savior before they froze in their places.

Emma was not surprised, if anything it seemed like this was something she wanted to cause. She walked to the pair.

“Listen to me, because what I have to tell very important. I need you to know that…”


	8. The Wind Is Howling Like This Swirling Storm Inside

It was very quiet and all that could be seen was white. Then suddenly the wind picked up and a purple vortex opened up and spewed out its Storybrooke passengers.

Neal and Belle was trying to control their fall and hinder the momentum as the rolled out of the portal but Gold was completely unresponsive and landed much further than the other two.

Luckily the massive amounts of snow on the ground cushioned their fall.

The Deputy was on his feet as fast as he could, helped the Librarian up and together they run to their family member who was on his back a couple of feet away from them.

“Papa.”

“Rumple.”

They said almost simultaneously as they kneeled next to the unconscious man.

Neither Belle’s gentle caresses on his face or Neal’s desperate shaking but shouting or whispering his name earned any reaction from him.

Their breath could be seen in the air and the cold quickly made its presence known as the clothes they had been wearing in Storybrooke didn’t provide much protection against it. To make matters the wind was picking up and angry grey clouds were moving closer and closer to their location.

Soon white water crystals showed up in their hair and on their clothes.

When a tear literally froze on Belle’s face Neal got out of his coat and gave it to her then pulled her close to him and the woman buried her face into his shirt as they huddled closer together to the unconscious man next to them in a desperate attempt to keep warm.

Their clothes became more and more white. The situation seemed drier by the second when there was an unexpected sound breaking the wind now howling around them.

“Belle,” came a weak but clear voice whose owner was definitely Gold.

The woman immediately sought out eye contact with her husband.

“Rumple, oh my God!” she said more than relieved and touched his face again and smiled at him with snowflakes attacked to her eyelashes.

“Are you okay?” Neal inquired while Belle held the man’s hand and together they helped him into a half sitting and then into a standing position.

“I am going to be as soon as we get out of this storm. Just give me a minute. I have to recharge some more,” he answered pretending to be stronger than he was. The attempt would have looked decent but the authenticity of was damaged by the fact that now he was shivering just like them.

“Where are we?” he asked after he and Neal made sure that Belle was standing between them and she was the most protected from the temper tantrum that nature was throwing around them.

“Wait, this isn’t the world you chose?”

“No, that would’ve been a desert. I have no idea where we are.”

He looked around while Neal suddenly found the sky fascinating. His father soon joined him in staring at the blue sun there.

“Well, that doesn’t seem ominous at all,” the older man snarked while Neal kept looking at the weird celestial phenomenon.

Then he shook himself out of it and asked his father, “Can you stop this damn storm?”

“Affecting nature requires far too much power. I am gathering just enough to be able to teleport us away from here. I think it’s only going to take a couple more minutes.”

Neal knew very well that teleporting when one doesn’t know their surroundings well was not a safe option but the risk had to be acceptable when the alternative was freezing to death.

“We can’t take this much longer,” he said but gestured towards Belle between them. She was desperately clinging to her husband while shaking from the cold.

“I know. Okay, let’s try this. Hold on to me, both of you. No matter what, do not let go.”

Belle couldn’t let go if she wanted while Neal had a problem with bending his fingers to his will but he does it. The minute his family was holding onto him cyclamen smoke surrounds them and then they disappeared.

The disappointment in every single one of them was palpable when the smoke disappeared from around them yet they were still surrounded by snow.

Sure at least they were not in the middle of a blizzard anymore but it was not that much better.

Neal was getting close to the end of his rope but tried to conceal the feeling. Gold was, once again, in worse shape so he didn’t notice it but Belle caught the moment and couldn’t help but feel that there was something weird going on with him.

“Can you do it one more time?” Neal asked without much hope in his voice seeing how drained his father looked from this one jump.

“I am sorry,” Gold murmured, hating his powerlessness. “This world’s magic is different somehow. I can’t seem to recharge at the rate I am usually able to.”

“That’s okay,” Belle tried to reassure him. “We can find shelter. I am sure of it.”

“Yeah, there should be people living around somewhere on this planet. We just have to find them.” Neal said but sounded more like he did to give hope to the woman whose reaction was the worst to this inhuman cold among them. It felt like a lie though.

Gold could see his wife’s reaction too, and it was eating away at him being this helpless until he realized that he may not able to teleport them away from this frozen place at the moment but he could do simpler things now that accumulating all his energy wasn’t required anymore.

That was all it tool and suddenly the three of them were wearing heavy, preheated winter clothes. After they stopped shaking even harder from the sudden temperature change they all felt relief.

Knowing that moving helped they kept walking despite how hopeless the situation seemed. Now they were much warmer.

Their darker clothing created striking contrast with the ocean of white surrounding them from all sides.

Some time passed and they were about to climb a small hill which, in this snow, was not that small feat. The ice air made it harder to breath but they helped each other like a family should and though it was not easy task they got to the top.

From their they could see a palace completely made of ice.

__________________________________________________________________________________

After telling the good news to everyone and halfway through it witnessing Roland and Robin’s throat squeezingly emotional reunion Tinker Bell decided to check on Regina. She didn’t know what she expected to find, thinking that the woman would surely need someone to talk to after everything that happened in the last twenty-four hours but what she has to witness now had most certainly not been among even the most improbable versions.

Regina was all dressed up and just applying some final touches to her makeup as if she was about to go out on a date. After battling her perplexion about the unexpected development, Tinker Bell just bursts out the first thing that comes to her mind “Are you going out with Emma?”

Regina laughed. Genuinely laughed and she could barely stop herself since Tinker Bell’s indignant facial expression was just making it harder. When she could finally stop long enough to speak, she said, “That was a good one. Oh, God I don’t think I remember the last time I laughed like that.”

She took a couple of deep breaths to calm herself. “Thank you.”

“You don’t know what I am talking about?” Tinker Bell inquired incredulously.

“I know you wanted to say Robin’s name in that sentence.” She cleared her throat. “Speaking about him, I think he should be here any minute now.”

“Regina, I don’t know what’s going on here but Robin is not coming. I know that for sure because he…” Her sentence got interrupted by the doorbell and Regina shot her a smug ‘I told you so’ look as she obviously didn’t even register what Tinker Bell had just said to her.

The blonde was now confused enough to follow Regina to the door kind of hoping that whoever it was they were going to be able to help her solve this irritating mystery. When Regina opened the door she had to blink a couple of times because the person on the other side of the door was Robin Hood.

He was dressed impeccably in the suit they chose together this morning and moved to kiss Regina on her cheek as greeting.

Tinker Bell almost begins to doubt her own memories seeing them like this. That’s when Robin notices her.

“Tink, what are you doing here?”

“I came here to tell Regina that Henry is staying with his grandparents when I found her like this…”

“Like this? What are you talking about? She is ready for our date. I know it’s not exactly as we originally planned it but this is Storybrooke so we thought what the hell…”

The Fairy felt like this madness was making her brain cells buzz unpleasantly. She made up her mind to ask some question to figure out what the flying monkey was going on. She stepped between them and put her hands on both their chests to push them apart.

“Look, guys, I don’t know what the hell is going on but you are obviously under some spell. Don’t you remember what happened today?”

“He saved me.”

“She saved me.”

Their answers were simultaneous.

They laughed at that.

Regina said, “We saved each other.”

Tinker Bell couldn’t stand the ‘I have fallen into an alternate universe’ feeling one more second because this wasn’t even them at all and since her words didn’t seem to be causing much effect on the pair she just stepped to the still open door and left to seek help.

She couldn’t help but think that if Regina would be her regular self and could see how she and Robin were acting very similarly to a certain royal couple she would be setting herself and possibly him on fire. That thought was reinforced when, after a couple of steps, she sees a carriage and two white horses waiting in front the mayoral mansion and some Merry Men with various musical instruments playing something she guessed was traditional in the Enchanted Forest but she had never heard before.

“What is going on with her?” Robin nodded towards where Tinker Bell disappeared as he and Regina were stepping over the threshold.

“I honestly have no idea.” Regina answered while Robin closed the door behind them.

There was something nagging at her mind but she was unable to pinpoint out what. They were now close enough for her to see the carriage and the band. That’s when she noticed one of the red and blue roses Emma Swan created in her garden – and apparently around her house – during one of their magic lessons many months ago when the Sheriff fused together all kinds of different flowers. What Tinker Bell said to her suddenly rushed to the forefront of her mind and it was like she had been hit in the stomach and the imaginary fist continued up into her chest cavity and grabbed her throat. It doesn’t make any sense for her to feel like this but then the carriage and the Merry Men come into her line of sight and Robin squeezed her hand she shook herself out of that unfathomable feeling she got and forgot all about her fairy friend’s strange visit and her even stranger mention of Emma Swan.

She smiled at Robin and he returned it and they move into the seats of the carriage as if this interlude had never even happened.

__________________________________________________________________________________

“Emma, you need to help. There is something seriously wrong with…” Tinker Bell shouted after knocking and then opening the door to let herself into the woman’s apartment without hearing any answer from the blonde that would permit her to do so. She forgot how to formulate words when, just after a couple of steps, her brain caught on and interpreted what was going on in the loft that was once the home of Mary Margaret Blanchard, grade school teacher and also known as the fairy tale character Snow White.

Said heroine’s daughter was standing at the table with a heart shining in her palm. She was just about to put it into a box that looked exactly the same like the ones Regina used to keep her collection in. The shock of the scene rendered Tink speech- and motionless. She lost track of time and suddenly was in a vacuum but then her brain started to work overtime to compensate for the glitch as it created an explanation for what she was seeing.

“It was you. You are the reason why Robin and Regina are acting more like your parents than themselves. That,” she nodded towards the organ in the Sheriff’s hand, “is one of theirs, isn’t it?”

Tinker Bell surprised herself with that assumption realizing who she was talking to and how improbable that idea was and Emma looked at her accordingly, a reaction that was not that unexpected from the Savior.

“No, it’s not.”

“But that…” the Fairy started and then stopped right away when realization dawned on her. “Oh, my God, it’s yours.”

The Sheriff confirmed it with a head movement and before Tinker Bell could even start to talk her out of it she quickly let the white and black heart go and closes the lid of its new home on it. The second the connection was completely broken Tinker Bell’s heart started to beat not fast but hard in a painful gallop.

There was no evident change in the now heartless Savior’s demeanor but losing one’s heart affected everyone. The reactions could vary from person to person and the Fairy hoped with everything she had in her that Emma will not turn into one of those cases she had heard rather horrific stories about.

“Why would you do this to yourself, Emma?”

“I had to,” she said in a much deeper voice than she usually spoke.

“It was the only way. I gave them both new memories about today. Ones that no one would doubt were real, you know, after all we did disappeared from them. I wanted her to be happy but when I left that little voice in my head wouldn’t shut up about how I couldn’t be sure that what I did was enough. Not when I could…”

She stopped and thought through what she wanted to say and then picked up another thought thread.

“Then I remembered how subdued my emotions became the second she had my heart in her hands and I knew what to do. Being separated from it completely was going to be even more effective but you know what? I think I made a mistake that I should correct.”

“Good. Just go to that box, open it up and put your heart back where it belongs and then we can fix everything. I’ll help.”

Tinker Bell attempted to force her wishful thinking on reality even though she had no idea what the hell Emma was talking about but she had the sinking feeling that what the Sheriff’s referred to as mistake was something else entirely than what she was hoping for. Her fear solidified when the other woman made the same hand movement that Regina usually does when performing magic and the box with the heart in it disappeared in a white light.

“I don’t need your help. I can do it.”

It was not an explicitly threatening statement but Tinker Bell had seen what Emma gave Regina and Robin and interfering with that would undoubtedly cause frisson which she had no idea how this version of the Savior would handle – not to mention the brainwashed version of Regina.

She knew she needed to talk the woman out of going to them or at least stall her until she had a better idea about what else she could do to stop the Sheriff from possibly making a horrible mistake.

“You said you had to… What did you mean by that?” Tinker Bell interjected lamely in her hurry to step in front of Emma who was considering walking out of the door.

“I tried to make sure she was safe from the curse.”

“Curse? Emma, I am completely lost here. What the hell are you talking about?”

“I am talking about Graham, Neal, Sam and Killian!”

Hearing the names, doing the math in her head made her realize that that was four dead men in four years in the Savior’s life and Tinker Bell immediately saw where this was coming from and Emma the fact that Emma got to this conclusion was not half as baffling anymore. Of course, she couldn’t very well tell that to the other woman.

“Neal is not dead.”

“He was, once, and now he’d fallen into a portal that lead to a world Gold chose because no one can leave it. I don’t see the difference.”

She was indifferent more than anything and she was looking at the door behind Tinker Bell for steadily growing periods.

Tinker Bell risked it and forced eye contact between them.

“Of course there is a difference. You can’t see it because you ripped your own heart out,” the Fairy shouted and she felt like the emotions Emma should be feeling were welling up inside her instead. Her outburst surprised her and she desperately tried to reign in her emotions but it was hard and even though she knew she had to be smart about this.

“Look at you! You got so scared from the possibility that what happened between you and Regina could lead somewhere you put running to a whole different level.”

Being antagonizing towards her could backfire quickly but she had to engage the woman because in their slow dance they were moving closer and closer to the door.

“I tried to do the right thing. I wanted Regina to be safe, for her to be happy.”

“And she is.”

“It’s not real.”

“But it’s something the real you, the whole you, gave her and it’s something that could give her real happiness, happiness she deserves. Look, you already changed your mind from what you planned to do and it’s been what five minutes since you sent your heart away? Who knows what its absence is going to do to you on the long run. You could even hurt her.”

Emma shook her head.

“I would never…”

She didn’t get to finish her sentence because the entrance opened and Regina practically run in.

“What did you do, Emma?”

“You are here.” The Sheriff smiled at the Mayor and it was warm, and it was the closest to real emotion she had shown since she turned herself into the Tin Man. It was almost like as if she was whole again at least until Robin caught up and strode up behind Regina.

“Are you gonna tell me what is going on?” he inquired but the second the last letter leaves his mouth he collided with the wall behind him. The wind was knocked out of him and Emma after sidestepping Tinker Bell started to march towards him in a rather terminator like mode without making one conscious thought about it.

Regina quickly teleported in front of her and seeing the purple smoke deterred the woman just enough that the Queen could put her right hand at the top of the Savior’s sternum to stop her advance.

She didn’t have to use her strength really, all she had to say, “Don’t!” and the blonde stopped.

The Mayor let Robin slide off of the wall and while Tink went to his side she moved straight into Emma’s personal space until they were practically nose to nose.

Tinker Bell suddenly couldn’t even imagine how this, them wasn’t painfully obvious to her before now but it was clear as crystal in this moment that this thing between them had always been there.

Robin next to her was just utterly confused and he locked like half his mind was contemplating just pulling the blonde next to him out of the door before things turn possibly life threatening again.

“You and I we have to talk,” Regina said to Emma. “I don’t know what is going on here exactly but I have a pretty good idea what parts of your gene pool to blame for this.”

“Regina, be careful, she took out her heart,” the Fairy warned her from behind them, while at the same time she kinds of tried to tell Robin with her eyes only, that leaving was not necessary a good idea at the moment.

“Oh, you idiot.”

There was disappointment, incredulity and even annoyance in the Mayor’s voice and she started to pace back and forth between Robin and Tinker Bell at the wall next to the door and Emma.

“Where is it?”

Emma almost looked guilty but it got lost in the chaos of her thoughts without her emotions to help her rein them in and it pretty much looked like some weirdly controlled panic attack.

“This is not what should’ve happened. No one should’ve known. I was supposed to…”

“Regina, you have to get back that heart inside her. She is losing herself.”

“Do not talk about me as if I weren’t in the room.”

The Mayor could see how the cords in the Sheriff’s neck were taut and she knew Tinker Bell was right but she also knew she had to approach this mess very delicately.

She hesitated but her instinct told her she could defuse this situation before it turned into an actual fight. She put her hand on Emma’s shoulder, they made eye contact and in that instant the woman was calmed.

The Fairy looked between them as a cat follows the laser pointer for a few seconds then asked, “What are you doing, Regina?” because she knew the brunette and it wouldn’t be her if she didn’t think of something already.

“I am showing Emma that she can trust me.”

Regina waved her hand towards Tinker Bell and Robin without looking away from Emma and the two of them couldn’t move or speak.

“Impromptu magic lesson, Miss Swan?”

“Sure,” Emma said.

Regina waved her hand and her mother’s spell book appeared in her hands. She was not sure that doing this was a good idea but she had to show the Savior that she was on her side if she wanted a shot at convincing her to reveal where she sent the most vital organ or her body, the same organ she had held in her hand earlier today.

She opened it at an empty page and then let it go. It kept floating and emitting a white yellow light.

“You did everything well, Emma, but you simply just written new memories on top of the original ones. If you do that there is a danger that a strong enough emotion, memory or a connection to a familiar object can bring one piece of what happened in reality back and then all your work can unravel. But if you use an object to imprison the original memories in, your success rate is much higher and if you actually use a book like this one that will make certainty that the memories you want gone stay gone no matter what your victims do until someone releases them from the pages.”

Emma nodded.

Robin understood less and less about what was going on while Tinker Bell’s face has quickly turned from betrayal to understanding. She knew what Regina was trying to do and even if it was definitely something she would’ve never even considered but it’s not like she has much say in where this was going to go.

At least she hoped really hard that that was what was going to happen.

“So first you reach in and feel for what you want gone,” Regina said in her teacher voice.

Emma turned around, walked and stopped right in front of the Fairy but then hesitated. Regina followed her and stood right in front of the man she was supposed to go out on a date with on this evening.

The two women were now standing parallel to each other much like their targets. Regina put her palms on the incapacitated man’s cheeks and made eye contact. He tried to understand it, she could see it in his eyes and she hoped that he did the same way he had done all those times before.

Emma looked at them and hesitated for only a moment before she copied the movement.

“Now concentrate. Look for what you want to erase.”

The heartless Savior follows the request and then smiled when it worked instantaneously. She could see them, moments swirling around from today and before in the other blonde woman’s head and it was confusing and made Emma’s head spin to see the memories.

“Slow it down. Look for the moment when she found out about what happened between us.”

The memory of seeing them kissing while she was possessed appeared.

“Do you have it?”

“Yes.”

“Then change it.”

“To what?”

“Something that is close enough to the truth that it hides it completely.”

“Should we fight?”

“Yes.”

“Should we cry?”

“Yes.”

“And there was no kiss, no intimacy, nothing but a hug between friends.”

Regina nodded.

“Now tell her, tell her that and with changing that one memory you will alter everything that follows.”

Emma did as she was told and the memory was altered as soon as she finished talking. She could see it in her mind’s eye as the whole ripple effects played out. She took a step back after letting the other woman go and then blue light swam out of Tinker Bell’s eyes.

It was pretty and it curiously floated in the air acting as if it was an animal waiting for its master’s command.

“Will it into the book,” Regina told her while trying to find out what to change it Robin’s memories.

Emma successfully did what Regina asked. The book kept slowly swaying in the air as the blue memory creature floated into an empty page and created a symbol made of circles, lines and squares.

“Very good,” Regina praised her. Emma smiled crookedly at her and then stepped next to the other woman and intently started to watch what her teacher was doing.

She held out her hand and read the new sequence of events Emma’s change created in the Fairy. What she saw surprised her but at the same time it would make this a little bit easier to do. So then she created a corresponding new scenario.

“You,” she touched Robin’s face, “will remember our date. I didn’t just stop the carriage and then run here. You never came here to find out what has gotten into me. We talked on the way and just had an epiphany that even though we are soulmates that doesn’t mean we have to be more than friends; that that is what’s working between us.”

“Then you wanted to take and you met with your friend, with Tinker Bell and decided to join each other and walk together and talk about you know what.”

The same type of light creature, except orange left the man’s head and followed the same path as Tinker Bell’s memories did and they created a similar but slightly more intricate design on the neighbor page.

The lines touched and become one with a circle that turned green.

Regina stepped away from them the same second the book closed itself.

One hand movement later Tink and Robin found themselves on the Main Street of Storybrooke walking next to each other.

They didn’t blink or falter just looked at each other and then kept walking as if nothing happened and started a conversation that already happened once between them.

“I guess you want to talk,” Emma said as soon as they are alone. She walked closer to the other woman until there was only about three steps distance between them. If Regina wouldn’t need to get the other woman’s heart back they would be having a very different conversation about how she dared to do what she did to her without her consent, alas that will have to wait until Emma was whole again.

“Your assumption is correct and I’d appreciate if you would…”

“How did you remember?” the Sheriff interrupted not letting the Mayor finish her sentence as if the connections only now solidified in her brain to be curious about this.

“Don’t you know that it’s rude to start talking while someone else isn’t finished their yet?”

“I am orphan. No one has thought me.”

It’s a low blow, and bordering on cruel with its cold hard fact delivery, and very unlike Emma. It worried Regina more than anything but it also squeezed her heart painfully because she knew very well whose fault that was.

“I don’t know what caused it. All I know is that one moment I was this annoyingly happy person and the next myself. By the way, you are going to pay for turning me into an idiot.”

“Are you going to punish me?” the Sheriff asked with a mischievous smile on her face in a sudden mood swing.

The question took Regina back years and also made a shiver run down her spine while they eyes connected.

“What are you doing, Emma?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” the Sheriff inquired, the look of want evident on her pretty face, as she kept eye contact with Regina cataloging the Mayor’s reaction.

“It is,” the brunette said after she gulped discreetly to shake herself out of that stupid little spell she got caught up in before it could derail their entire conversation in a way that should have never ever turned into a possibility to begin with, “but I was talking about all the magic; falsifying memories and taking out hearts...”

“Uh, so it’s business first.”

Regina didn’t address the assumption behind that statement instead she decided to go with “You know me.”

“You actually wonder if I am me or am I still possessed?” Emma asked confused because the Mayor knew when that was the case, and if the Savior was sure of one thing it was that she would know it this time around too.

“The Emma Swan I have been teaching wouldn’t be able to do these things, at least not alone. I’d like an explanation on why all of sudden you don’t have a problem with using your magic.”

“Some of her knowledge did stay in my head but that’s not the whole reason. This?” she said waving a hand in front of her body as if she was presenting herself, “This is all thanks to you.”

Regina slowly nodded her head signaling that she would like her to elaborate on that strictly forbidding her eyes to linger on the Sheriff’s body a second longer than what a casual look entailed.

“Remember how you rolled your eyes when my mother said that the only thing stopping me from using my magic’s full potential was the wall around my heart? Well, it turned out she hit the nail on the head. I checked, you know. That blue energy thingie, it’s not there anymore. I was just desperate when I went into your study to talk to you but then it just worked. You two stopped moving and then I just did it all without thinking about it. It was like instinct took over like how you always described it.”

“But why did you have to take out your heart?”

“You know why.”

“You did not do this because you think you believe you are cursed,” Regina almost shouted.

The Sheriff didn’t answer but just looking at her was enough for the Queen to have her answer.

“Oh, you moron, you are not cursed. You never were. Except now, in a way, you are.”

“I didn’t know what else to do. We had sex and five minutes later you got possessed. I considered it as a bad omen.”

Regina spoke very slowly as if she didn’t want to say it but couldn’t stop herself from uttering these words, “You said in the car to Jefferson’s place that you thought anyone you...”

“…loved would die.”

Regina’s face contorted in confusion.

“What? I can say it now. I don’t have a heart.”

“Emma…”

“Do not try to deny it. I think it’s pretty self evident from what happened between us that we both have feelings for the other.”

“Well, I won’t talk about this with you until you are not whole again.”

“This might be the only time we can talk about it. I don’t really know how it works.”

“It doesn’t work at all. There is no curse and I can prove it to you.”

“How?” Emma was suspicious because she knew Regina well and she had a pretty good idea where the woman in front of her wanted to go with this.

“We get your heart back into your chest and then you will see that I will not die.”

“Nope. That’s not how this is going to work.”

“Emma, this is serious, you are made out of true love. You need your heart and without it there is no telling what you could become.

“I feel fine.”

“Really? Because not ten minutes ago you attacked Robin Hood like you wanted to kill him.”

“I don’t know why I did that. It wasn’t intentional.”

“And that doesn’t scare you?”

“My head knows that perhaps it should but my emotions, they are barely there. I have to focus on them and it’s exhausting.”

“We need to get that heart back inside you right now.”

“I couldn’t tell you where it was even if I wanted to.”

“And why the hell not?”

“I know the people in this town, Regina, and I know you. You or someone else would have figured out what I did and then they would have wanted to fix it so I made sure that you couldn’t. I sent it away somewhere no one would look, ever, not you but not even me, somewhere protected even from the strongest of magic.”

“You didn’t. Emma, please, tell me you sent it out into the ether without an exact location in mind.”

“I could lie if you wanted me to.”

“You really don’t know?”

“I really don’t know.”

 “What did you think about when you did the spell? Every detail is important. Maybe we could educe it.”

“I can’t really tell you more than what I already did. I just concentrated on wanting you to be safe and my heart to be gone so that it would all stop. The rest just happened.”

 “This is wonderful. With your powers you could’ve sent it to a different world even. What am I going to do with you now?”

“Make sure that I don’t hurt anyone.”

“You want me to be the town’s body guard?”

“In a way.”

“The Savior relying on the once Evil Queen’s heart. That should work wonderfully.”

“You just have to keep me busy. Otherwise engaged,” Emma suggested and then stepped closer to the other woman but Regina stepped away.

“Oh, we are not doing this. Not without your heart,” Regina stated and then walked out of the apartment leaving Emma alone with her barely there emotions and swirling thoughts.

__________________________________________________________________________________

After a long walk Gold, Belle and Neal arrived to the entrance of the crystal castle. There was hope and trepidation varying on their faces.

“This is beautiful and terrifying at the same time,” Belle admitted now in much better shape thanks to the work out getting here required and some energy transfer from her husband.

“I have a suspicion that the queen of the castle is the same,” Gold added offhandedly.

“You know who we are going to find in there?” Neal inquired with surprised interest in his voice.

“It was just an assumption.”

Neal nodded.

“Well, it’s not like we have a choice.”

The Deputy knocked on the ice door. The sound traveled in the frozen water and it gave off a chime. They looked at each other hearing the strange melody echoing through the air. It was not ominous but it was not exactly inviting either. It sounded disinterested more than anything which was strange.

The same second the sound disappeared, the door opened. Neal and Belle automatically moved back but Gold stayed in his place preparing to do what he could if he had to protect them. There was no one on the other side of the door. They walked in. The place was deserted. Every single thing was made out of ice from the tiles on the ground to the furniture and the lamps. Unfortunately there was not only no sign of life anywhere there didn’t seem to be a heat source either. Despite those conditions it was still unquestionably better to be in here than it was on the outside.

“The fact that no one showed up after that door bell action makes me believe that if there is anyone here they don’t want to company.”

“You are probably right,” Gold agreed with Neal’s assessment as they moved closer and closer to the center of the building. There were no doors anywhere just archways and copes. Walking through one they arrived into what looked like a throne room.

“It seems to be empty. What do you think happened here?” Belle asked the men in her company.

“Magic,” Gold answered while he looked around more thoroughly. After everything being near transparent the color at the end of the room caught their eyes very quickly. It was red and it looked almost like an actual building that was a part of this frozen structure but it was hard to tell because it seemed wrecked.

Neal stopped a couple of feet from it when the other two in the room moved closer.

“This feels familiar somehow I just don’t know from where.” Belle informed them while she kept trying to put together the picture without the distortion of the ice.

Half a moment later a blonde woman with piercing blue eyes teleported into the room and materialized in front of them making them take three steps back.

She was looking at them each one by one as she said, “You actually found it,” and it twisted both Belle and Gold’s faces into confusion, especially when Neal stepped in front of them in a protective stance wiping a single tear sliding off his face quickly.

“I can’t believe you did it,” the unknown woman continued with a smile that was even more confusing.

“What is she talking about?” Belle asked while Gold was looking back and forth between the new addition to the room and his son and their interaction that made absolutely no sense to him at all in any way he was willing to consider.

“Who are you?” he demanded an answer.

“Don’t you know, Rumplestiltskin?”

“So you know me, and you also seem to know my son, it would be professional courtesy as one villain to the other to extend an introduction, don’t you think?”

“Oh, you made me, you should know who I am.”

Gold didn’t have patience for riddles, never had, “What is she talking about, Bae?”

“You aren’t Ingrid, are you?”

“You know who I am, Neal. Why don’t you tell them our story?”

The man let out a shaky breath than made eye contact with his father.

“That building in front of us, you both know it. Papa, you have been walking next to it for almost thirty years and Belle, you…”

“…work there,” the Librarian finished the sentence. “It’s the clock tower from Storybrooke. But I don’t understand. How?”

Belle was waiting for an answer from Neal but he wasn’t the one who gave it to her.

“It’s simple…” the blond woman drawled. “THIS. IS. STORYBROOKE. Just a different version of it.”

The second that sentence was uttered by her, she looked up at what remained of the Library and Gold deemed the opening good enough to take action. He felt like he regained enough strength to immobilize this woman and get his family out of this situation but the moment he followed through with his plan the stranger easily deflected his attack and threw them all back about ten feet.

“You should’ve have done that. I have what I need now and I don’t need you.”

The ice moved beneath them and turned to water but as it touched them it froze them in the process. Gold was fighting it but his hands were immobilized before he could do more than throw one fireball at their captor.

The woman didn’t even flinch when it hit her and it hit her squarely on the chest.

“Don’t do this EEEE…” Neal tried to plead but he couldn’t even finish the sentence before the ice trapped him.

The last thing Rumplestiltskin saw before losing consciousness was his wife and son already as ice sculptures.

__________________________________________________________________________________

There was a thud when Regina’s back collided with the door of her bedroom as Emma pushed her there kissing her. Soon they started to rock into each other and Emma pulled at Regina’s clothes but she was stopped by a hand.

“What are we doing?”

“You are the one that turned back from the door you are the one who then proceeded to kiss me like it was the end of the world and then teleported us here.”

They were staring into each other eyes and Regina was looking for something in Emma’s she was not sure she would be able to find right now.

“Do we need definitions?” the Savior without a heart asked keeping eye contact the whole time.

“No,” came the answer and then another kiss. “But we are already here. We are making it to the bed this time.”

Emma took one step back and Regina went with her and then she pushed her lover down onto the bed with just enough force that the Savior bounced a little on landing. She expected complaining or attempts at getting the upper hand but this Emma – at least right now – seemed to be more than content with letting her take the lead so she did.

She got the other woman naked while the blonde helped her removing her own clothes. When they were naked Regina straddled Emma’s hips.

They both moaned at the skin to skin contact.

Emma bucked her right side more intensely, trying to give a hint to the brunette above her what position she’d prefer much more. Regina got it right away and moaned out loud just thinking about it. The Mayor moved to position herself astride over the heat emanating from the Sheriff’s core. The blonde spread her legs further apart in invitation. Regina used one of them as an anchor as she stayed hovering over her partner.

The anticipation for that first contact was setting them both on fire.

“You are killing me,” Emma stated with shallow breaths leaving her mouth. “Just lower yourself down, please. I want to feel you on me.”

Regina smirked at her then made contact between their bodies so that their wetness mingled and their clits touched.

Their moans were synchronized.

Regina started with a leisure rhythm.

It has both their toes curling.

Emma was soon demanding a quicker pace and the Queen couldn’t see any reason to deny her request. They will have time to take it slow, later.

Their movements became less controlled and more frantic and soon Emma was screaming Regina’s name as she cane and the brunette soon followed after she repositioned herself and ground on the entire length of Sheriff’s thigh a couple of times.

The muscles in the back of the Mayor started to glow a stronger and stronger blood red through her climax.

The light showed the bones of her spine, the veins and tissue of her lungs and the outline of her heart – hearts, actually, as there was not one but two of said organs beating inside of her chest completely in rhythm with each other.

__________________________________________________________________________________

The blond sorceress was walking back and forth in front of the three ice sculptures that she created.

She stopped and she said only one thing before grey smoke surrounded her and there was a woman with blonde hair and green eyes and jeans and boots and a red leather jacket in her place.

“It’s time to go home.”

A hat puffed into existence in her hand. She looked back one more time to the middle of the throne room where Gold, Neal and Belle were before spinning the hat.

The purple vortex appeared and the woman looking like Emma Swan jumped in.

 

 

 

_TO BE CONTINUED_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe.


End file.
